Archive for the &;technology-and-its-discontents&; Category
Time Capsule of a More ProsperousEra
October 15, 2009
Cleaning out my office I found some &;sacred artifacts of the past&;, as Leonard Cohen sang in another context (about the loss of the &;naked man and woman&;).
What did I find? I found a Family Computing Magazine from 1999, talking about the best computer and printer to buy, how to set up your home office, fight viruses, etc. At the time, people would pay $2.99 for a magazine that would impart such wisdom. And writers and editors would actually get paid for their expertise in technology.
I used to say, &;If you can write about tech, you&;ll always eat. You may not want to live, but you&;ll always eat.&;
No more.
In a related development, I found a NY Times classified ad page that had no less than ten (10) columns offering editorial jobs, from managing editor, puzzle editor, editorial/idea shaper, reporter, development editor, producer editor at Times Mirror for hunting and fishing websites, music editors, editorial assistants, and even a copyeditor!
Rather than save these depressing time capsules, I tossed them.
The paperless era appears to be the payless era as well. As Everybody knows&;
Tags:copyediting, death-of-journalism, death-of-print, Leonard-Cohen Posted in Journalism, technology-and-its-discontents, technology-journalism | Leave a Comment &;
Death Panel for MyDell
September 24, 2009
I submitted my seven-year old Dell 4400 to a death panel last week, and the verdict was thumbs-down. Perhaps there are some packrats out there who will grieve for this $1300 1.7Ghz Pentium 4 system with 256MB of RAM and 64MB NVIDIA GeForce3 video card, but I doubt it. Even the charities wouldn&;t take it.
Business was slow, and only I would know what was worth keeping from it. So began the disappearance of four days of my life.
I excavated the old computer to find the files I wanted to transfer, only to find that USB flash drives didn&;t work on the damn thing, due to the difference between USB 1.0 and USB 2.0, which apparently (I tried) is not updatable by downloading drivers. The damned Dell also wouldn&;t support my handy-dandy portable hard drive, for the same reason.
Better yet, it wouldn&;t write to the CDRWs I tried to use to download data either. After days of this (and use of the old &;sneaker network&; of 3.5&; floppy drives to transfer data), I had a sudden thought and ran off to Office Depot. CDRWs didn&;t work&;but the Hawaiian pattern CDRs I bought ten for $1.99 did!
Hallelulah, almost ready for the dump! Just need to format the hard drive and&;. Wait, can&;t format the hard drive? Need to reinstall XP in order to wipe out the existing version? What?
The nightmare continued, through two phone calls to Dell tech support (end-of-life-support in this case) in the Phillipines, I believe. Each asked the same question, &;Where&;s your original Dell XP disk?&; Who the hell knows? I found manuals for Windows 98 and XP in the man cave, even Windows 95 disks, but not the Dell XP disk. Without it, they couldn&;t help me, and of course my Acer XP disk wasn&;t recognized.
Choices? I could buy another Dell-flavored XP disk for $12 and wait for it to arrive, or download some of the dubious disk erasers out there.
The PC never ran very well, but its stubbornness in holding onto to its operating system and data was heartwarming.
Ultimately I got sick of the time sink spent dealing with it. I found a recycling yard full of dead PCs, televisions, fax machines, tape drives and the assorted flotsam of Western civilization, for the Dell to spend its days in squalid purgatory before its inevitable journey to the Third World for its final destruction.
As for the 80GB hard drive, I pulled it out and let my 10-year old take it apart. Once torn to pieces, it went into the trash and off to the dump. If you want to find it and dig out my old invoices and stories, knock yourself out.
Tags:technology, technology-and-its-discontents Posted in technology, technology-and-its-discontents | Leave a Comment &;