~ Monday, April 16, 2001 ~

 

11:19 p.m. I've been having the most frustrating time these last few days trying to get my old computer system to hang on and produce for me for just a little while longer. Yes, I know it's past its prime.

To blow off some steam between crashes, I've gone looking at newer, finer computer systems on the web. I'm chagrined to learn that if I drove a really hard bargain, I could get between $49 and $100 for my complete system, including printer, were I to attempt a trade-in.

Were I to live in a sterile vacuum, unconnected to the outside world and uncommunicative to boot, I could probably use this system and all its peripherals for ever and ever and ever. But that's not the way the real world works.

The real world contains the big schoolyard bully Microsoft. After he steals my lunch money, he likes to get me in trouble with my old friend Adobe by doing things to the innards of my folders behind my back and then pretending to be mum and innocent when I try to check up on it.

My word processing program (Nisus), my file system (HyperCard), my emergency retrieval system (CanOpener) -- they're all years and versions behind, but they all work. It's only when I use them to create files that I want to take to market that I suddenly find myself turning obsolete right before my own eyes.

I'm stumped, I tell you. Stumped.

Yar. (I've also been trying to work "petrified" in here, too. So really, you're getting off easy.)

Trying to work with PDF, HTML, RTF, TXT, LIT ... let's see ... OEDB, DRM ... anything else? SOS?

Hours spent poking around the Apple site, looking for printer drivers. More hours spent at Adobe, trying to create a Virtual Printer so that I can get PostScript to work. Different combinations -- sometimes I crash with no warning and sometimes I hang and sometimes I get an error message and then I have another clue and off I go to spend another few hours ...

And the Microsoft browser isn't working because it's responding to an invisible file that I don't know how to find and discard. I found this out from a Usenet notice buried deep in an old chat. The invisible file was deposited by a cookie, no doubt. And then, to top it all off, I got another copy of the Snow White virus in my mailbox.

All in all -- two steps forward, a mad St. Vitus dance backward. I've shut down and rebuilt and re-installed enough for today, and so I'm going to give it a rest. When it comes to this entire system, I *am* the weakest link; goodby.