Only Computers Get Old, Right?

Well, they do.

Only Computers Get Old, Right?

I can't get online right now, and it's stressing me out. I've never been very self-disciplined, somebody has always had to handle it for me. But sooner or later, no matter how lax and lackadaisical I've become, I have to do something that needs to be done. Like pay a bill to keep the power on, or the car insurance in force. Or wash dishes. Or, cuss it, run the vacuum.

In an effort to help my son, I needed to burn a DVD from an ISO image file. I'm up to four computers now, with two of them being prime candidates for recycling, one of them fairly decent, and this one, somewhere in between. This is the one on which I create. To be honest, I didn't remember whether the disk burner in this machine was merely CD capable, or if it could burn DVDs. Device manager didn't tell me, it said “CD/DVD drive” so I was hoping that meant it would do both. I'm still not sure, but it doesn't matter because with a blank DVD in the bay, it said the bay was empty. Or maybe it was the fake program I downloaded that was supposed to burn DVDs from ISO image files. I suspect it delivered a rootkit instead, because my antivirus software was disabled after that, and my browsers wouldn't open after the next bootup. But the rootkit sniffer found nothing, which they say, doesn't mean anything, and then I realized that I had maybe eighteen huge files on my desktop that approached or exceeded half a gig apiece in size. You don't suppose that's why startup is so slow?

So I moved all of that crap, and removed all of the other crap, and now I'm running a full virus scan. The adware/spyware scan was first, of course, and it said everything is wonderful in there. No, it isn't. So while my best computer is very slowly downloading a very important file, I've decided it's advisable to avoid loading my network with any other internet activity. It works out, because I can run the virus scan on this one while I write something. But I haven't checked my email or the weather or the news, and that's just not cool.

I know just enough about computers of the desktop variety to be dangerous. That is, dangerous to my computers, or their operating systems. Messing them up and then getting them going again has become a bit of a hobby, and not by choice. If you break it, you've gotta fix it. I've pulled these machines back from the brink when they wouldn't even start. I very seldom reload an operating system, and I've worked with various kinds of those.

Nevertheless, there will come a time when something will fail that it isn't worth the money to replace; or worse, that can't be replaced with something new that will still work with the old architecture. It struck me, the human body is a lot like that.

You can medicate away high blood pressure, take pills to lower serum cholesterol, even get an organ transplant. But after a while there's no point in connecting up a new heart to ancient arteries, or the bone graft won't heal, or something like that. “You're only as old as you feel” is grossly oversimplified. Number one, everyone who looks at you knows damn well better, and two, it's really hard to feel young if you don't feel very well.

So hoorah for recycling. Putting my old carcass in a box inside a concrete vault will only slow down the process, let it lay. If you won't do that then let's go the route of cremation, and scattering the ashes. I said scatter, but flushing is okay too. I won't be in there anyway.

I say that because of my dad. He's a lot older than I am, and he's doing well. He was out picking apples yesterday, and the neighbor lady had come over to help. Dad related that he told her, “When my son gets here, he'll be upset if he finds out I was on top of the ladder again, so I won't do it. There's one nice apple clear up on top. I'll chuck this rock up there and knock it down. When I do, you catch it.” So he did, he said, and nailed that apple right on the money with the rock. “Got it!” she asserted, and then she walked around the tree and handed him the rock.

Finishing the story, my father laughed heartily. Not a word of it was true.

What a guy. If that doesn't show that the spirit is immortal, I don't know what does.

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