April 15, 2007

• Minor Setback, Major Disappointment

  That’s what I get for having expectations.  Maybe I’ll learn that little lesson someday.

  Yesterday, being Saturday, Doug had the computer all day with his regular weekly online roleplaying session.  I wanted to write, but did not want to do it in longhand in a spiral notebook for later transcription into xTools.  Pardon me, but I’m spoiled. 

  Several years ago, I did most of the work on my memoirs on our old laptop, saved it to diskette, and transferred it to this computer (actually to its predecessor – I keep forgetting that this is a “new” computer).  Then, piece by piece that old laptop failed.  We had named the thing Schpeedy Trackbawl when the trackball developed an addiction to frequent cleanings with rubbing alcohol.  Eventually, the trackball stopped working altogether.

  I learned to use arrow keys and keyboard shortcuts and went on writing in Works for Windows until that software developed some fatal flaws.  After that, I was composing my blogs in Notepad.  The no-frills approach still beat the old manual typewriter on which I made my living doing psychic readings by mail during the late eighties and through most of the nineties, before we moved in here on the power grid and I got internet access.

  Then one day the laptop just wouldn’t boot up.  It told me it couldn’t read from drive C.  A few times the push – the – button – again – when – that – push – doesn’t – work method worked for me, but eventually even that technique failed and I put the laptop away.   A while after that, on a trip back to our old place across the highway, I found the set of replacement software that Compaq had sent me during the warranty period when the display overheated and there was a need to replace some hardware and all the software.  The box of diskettes had some water damage and mildew, so I wasn’t sure the data was intact.

  Yesterday, finally, I was motivated to try.  I reformatted ol’ Schpeedy’s hard drive, used the boot disk I’d made way back when we got the laptop (over ten years ago, not sure exactly, but the OS was MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1, if that’s a clue), and inserted Setup disk 1.  With a little refresher course in DOS commands from Doug, I managed to get to 11% of the DOS setup before it said there was a disk read error.  By a combination of sticking the disks in the freezer for a while (little trick I learned from one of the geeks who hung out at the Astrological Center of Alaska back in ’81 when I worked there) and a few applications of my personal ki – as in flicking my fingers at the disk and whispering “zap” while focusing on thoughts of success – I eventually completed the DOS setup.

  When I tried the first of the Windows setup disks, it was no go.  It’s probably just as well that all my efforts at setting up Windows failed.  Doug revealed to me the DOS text editor, and I set about setting down my blog for today, about beliefs and believing in things.  Right at the start, I typed in a few lines, saved them to disk, and interrupted Doug’s game long enough to plug the disk in here and make sure everything worked compatibly.  No problem:  the Notepad on here opened the DOS text file and read it.  I was set.  That text editor is the basest of basic:  no text wrap, lines 256 characters long, slow scrolling and not much in the way of word processing tools, more like just text manipulation.

  I had almost completed the piece I wanted to write when I lost power in the wall outlet I was using and lost my unsaved text, all but those first few lines of the test-shot.  The power loss was no surprise.  What had surprised me when I plugged Schpeedy’s power supply into the outlet was that it had power.  We’ve been using heavy duty extension cords strung through the hallway from back bedrooms to power the front room for quite a while now because power to front room wall outlets is intermittent at best.  I fiddled, futzed, fussed and fixed it with a 3-way plug in the extension cord, and reconstructed what I’d lost, after a fashion.  I know it wasn’t the same, but when it was done I was satisfied with it.

  I stuck the disk in the storage case over here, and when I tried to load it on this machine this morning it wouldn’t read.  If anyone is interested in my thoughts about belief and believing in things, that will have to wait until the inspiration hits again, if it ever does.  Meanwhile, there’s the old thing I wrote for my KaiOaty site, called Flim-Flam, Hocus Pocus, Mumbo Jumbo and Gobbledygook.  I reread it today, fixed a broken link, and decided it has stood up to the test of time well enough.

  ---

  P.S.  My daughter Angie called me this morning.  She’s the one I gave up for adoption in infancy, who tracked me down sometime in the ‘nineties.  As usual, we had a fun and love-filled conversation, laughed a lot and shared a bunch of news that was awesome on both ends.

  Angie was partially responsible for my having started blogging my memoirs here on Xanga.  When she found me, she had asked me about her father, wanting to know if he’d been important to me, or maybe just a one-night stand.  He just happened to have been the love of my life, and the story of her conception, birth and surrender for adoption was a long one.  I wrote it out for her, and later on when I got onto Xanga having that story in the can, so to speak, ended up being the start of the memoir blogs.  Even if I hadn’t written it, I’d consider it an excellent story.  If you want to read it, here are the links: 
  part one 
  part two 
  part three
  part four

  

  • 4:20 pm
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