31 December 1997: A Crummy Way To End The Year

Wednesday, 31 December 1997:

A Crummy Way To End The Year

So last night I turned on my home computer and...

WHIIIIRRRRRRRRR...

It turned on, looked for the boot disk, and just sat there, apparently trying and failing to read the hard disk. I tried booting from the CD-ROM, but it still couldn't find the disk, which probably means it's a real problem rather than a corrupted system file.

I think this happened when the cable guy came on Monday; we had to move the computer to get at the cable outlet in the bedroom. Although it started up fine on Monday night, last night I was just toast. There are a couple more things I can try, but I'd guess it's 95% certain it needs to be repaired, if not to have the whole disk replaced. It's a Power Computing Mac clone - yes, the company that's being gobbled up by Apple tomorrow - so I'm unsure what to do about servicing it. Although if worst comes to worst I can probably get a new hard drive installed without much fuss.

Anyway, unless I can rig my rather primitive PowerBook up to my modem (and find software to drive it), then this journal is going to have to go on hiatus until the main machine gets fixed. I'm not sure when that will be, but it will certainly be until next week, at the earliest. If you want me to notify you when it comes back up, send me e-mail and I'll send out a mailing when things are back up.

I've been a Mac owner for ten years now, and this is only the second problem I've ever had with them. The first was with my first Mac, whose hard drive was improperly installed and died a week after I bought it. So in reality this is my first problem in ten years. That's a damn good record - especially since I've had multiple Wintel machines at work get fried. So I'm not complaining too much. But it is a pain. Guess I'll get a hell of a lot of reading done this weekend.

It's mainly a pain because I was all ready to finish off my final contributions to APA Centauri last night, and now that work has been lost. I had some other stuff that wasn't backed up, but very little that I really wanted to keep, fortunately.

Oh, well.

On the bright side, I tried out my new microwave yesterday, and it seems to work fine. I also did finally buy a new answering machine - a Lucent thing - and it seems to work fine, too. My old machine was mangling the outgoing message and giving me some trouble on the incoming ones, too. It was a Panasonic, and I've never been terribly happy with it, though it was okay for a while.

So, that's my 1997. It hasn't been an especially good one. It has had some high points, though, including:

Gaming more often with my local friends. Other than Magic we've played many new games, the best including The Settlers of Catan, Master Labyrinth and Robo Rally.
Going to WisCon 21 and having dinner with Mary Doria Russell, author of the excellent novel The Sparrow.
Re-emphasizing my love of collecting and reading comic books.

There were others, but those are the ones that loom largest in my mind just at the moment.

We'll see what 1998 brings.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)