Computers. They coordinate their problems so you get a whole run of breakdowns at once. Friday afternoon I came home to find my computer giving me “error loading operating system” messages and refusing to boot, with a whole string of error messages that seemed to vary with the time of day, the barometric pressure, and the elevation of the constellation Draco. This isn’t very surprising, given the drive was eight years old, but replacing it meant spending a Lot of Money that I don’t have. And of course, the entire system uses SCSI interface drives, and as we all know, “SCSI” is super-double-secret code for “costs two to three times as much.” This was no exception. A 36GB SCSI drive, by the time I got through hauling out a credit card at Fry’s (the only place in town I could find one on Friday night), cost $196.00 with tax. For comparison, a 40GB SATA drive—almost as fast all around—is $110 at Fry’s. And the SATA drive offered a thirty-dollar rebate, so it would only cost $80 in the end. I didn’t get offered a rebate with the SCSI drive.
I gritted my teeth and bought the drive. I didn’s really need that much space, since the drive I’m replacing is only 4GB, but the only 18GB available cost more than the 36GB. Go figure. I brought it home, and ever since I’ve been reinstalling and moving applications and data. Thankfully, the 4GB drive is still readable if not bootable, so I slaved it in and salvaged my data. (Except I just discovered that I forgot to get the data out of my own account when I was moving it, and my account was the one with the most data. Crap. That means I’ll have to open the box back up and splice the bad drive in again.)
Then the point-of-sale system at the Land of Faerie must have heard someone say that the new Empirical computers (the ones that Officially Don’t Exist, except they do) are supposed to arrive tomorrow, so it crashed today just to spite us. Fortunately, I had just finished running backups when it blew. Less fortunately, something about the inventory database wasn’t right after I rebuilt the system and restored the files, because it’s only got about a hundred records visible instead of 5,500. Either the pointers are screwed up or I’ve done something else wrong. Whichever it is, someone else is gonna have to talk to the guys at Keystroke to find out what to do, ’cos I can’t get time off from the Empire tomorrow to see after it. As it is, I have a feeling I’m gonna spend a chunk of time in the Land of Faerie this week anyway, setting up systems and migrating data.
The canvas locomotive pushes the eleemosynary screwdriver. Fnord.
