Computer problems

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Aren't computers maddening? You can't live with em, and you can't live without em.

They are so great, when they work right. It's when they don't act right, when the software stops working the way you expect it to work or the hardware starts doing unexpected tricks. that it can drive you crazy cuz their's no one who can just 'fix it'. You have to figure it out yourself. You'd like to pay someone to just come out and spend 3-4 hours fixing your computer with all the things you can't figure out...but usually to explain it to the person, you have to already understand the problem, and sometimes you just don't.

For example there's probably always about 4 or 5 things on my system at any given time that don't work the way I would like it to...
- Rhapsody doesn't work on the upstairs computer...but it works downstairs.
- The audio has a short in it so it's always clicking and we have to turn it onto mute.
- I tried replacing the audio card without literally replacing the audio card - but getting a USB audio card. It doesn't work. I hate to tear out the old audio card for fear it will not work again.
- The fan on the computer is humming incessantly. I don't know if a drive is going bad, or if the fan needs to be replaced...and who does fan replacement anyway?
- The wireless network seems to work less often than not. Do you have to replace wireless routers? I know I kept having problems with the network for about a year before I called Comcast who came out and said - we upgraded our system and pulled these from the field a year ago.
- The wireless mouse stops working - is it the battery, the distance, or just a dumb mouse/
- Cables, Cables, Cables. I could swear they multiply behind our table. It's an unbelievable tangle.
- This dumb thing is so slow. I could swear it boots up so much slower than it used to.
- I lost a bunch of picture files.

When you have prolbems of this sort you have a couple of options.
- You can stop adding components to your computer, be happy with the computer is and never add anything to it
- You can beg for help from friends when they come to visit
- You can hire a professional to come out and work on your system
- You can get rid of your existing system and purchase a new system which was designed to do what you wanted to do.

Life is like this. Our lives are full of little inconveniences, problems, things we would change if we could...but we don't know how to fix it. The time we can commit to fixing it is limited. We can either stop growing and changing. We can beg friends to be patient with our problems and ...