Free, at last, from the yoke of oppression

These past weeks have been as much of a mental break as they were a return to Ground Level. To Joy. My old self, Square One. If it weren’t for the limits of technology, who knows how long it might have taken for desire to reawaken within me—to come back to this blog.

Suffice to say, here I am again. Back on the ol’ Witiculture blog. Recharged, running full and cool. Ready to tackle new challenges.

Geez, I sound like I’m giving a stump speech.

I’d seriously begun—well, honestly, I was way past begun—to hate computing at home. And I don’t toss that particular four-letter word around too often. Technology can expand one’s abilities for accomplishment, and I’d certainly been eager, early on, to embrace it.

But this past year had found me increasingly frustrated with my PC’s inabilities to do what I asked of it. It had gotten to the point wherein I just simply refused to wrestle with the grief I would constantly bear when attempting to accomplish the most basic of tasks. Looking back, if I had only been more focused on replacing it, I probably would not have endured for so long what I could barely stand to tolerate! Indeed, some days I was ready to take a 20-pound sledgehammer to it; I truly hated to even turn the damned thing on.

Sometimes, you can’t help but feel that epithets will figure prominently in your epitaph.

Finally, toward the middle of July, and only days before my contract ended quite abruptly at VMware, my PC gave up the ghost. Ironically, I had just ordered and received new DIMM chips, and was preparing to install this new RAM when the mother board blew a trace—as if the infernal contraption knew I was going to tinker with it and should instead add insult to injury.

There was a period there in which I wasn’t sure what had happened and I’d had the PC diagnosed. I’d hoped it wasn’t the hard drive that had blown. Thankfully, it wasn’t the hard drive (and I now have everything backed up, thank goodness). But meanwhile, I’d been paying my bills and doing other personal stuff online at work—something I don’t prefer to do. I certainly hadn’t preferred to blog while at work, either; there’s always something preventing me from doing that. Call it ethics if you will. Or the need for at least two hours of research and writing time, if not more, to assemble a decent blog post.

After all, the paychecks I was receiving from VMware were, ostensibly, compensation for my actually performing a job for them, not for me.

When the gig with VMware ended—due more to fulmination at the top of the organization than to my own performance—I was suddenly without a computer. True enough, I felt free and unburdened from the yoke of PC oppression—it was now my turn!—but only for about two days. I needed to stay tapped in. I needed to pay my bills! If nothing else, I needed to be able to respond to email to the tune of 150 on a slow day.

So I got a new PC, an immensely sleek, shiny and souped-up HP box equipped with Windows Vista (which I thoroughly like, by the way). After much configuring, reinstalling, and getting back to routine, I set out to discover the new PC’s boundaries. And, as it turned out, to rediscover and expand my own.

I want to be *your* Sledge Hammer. This will be my testimony!

I’m much happier now. The joy has returned! Without going into specifics, let’s just say that I have 200 times the RAM I used to have. And I have accomplished much. Oh, so much.

And yet, these past weeks have had me in Stealth Mode as I have sought to exploit my new PC’s capabilities. Certainly I’d had a huge To-Do List to tackle—things I hadn’t been able to do on the old PC. It had become a marvelously long list.

As I’ve been checking off these items, the To-Do list has gotten longer but the stress has melted, my focus has sharpened immensely, the Joy of Accomplishment has returned, and I can once again approach my future with a newfound enthusiasm. I’m smiling again!

I love my new PC.

Now there’s a four-letter word I think I’ll be using more often.
And so, patient reader, please stay tuned for news about what I’ve been up to. There is much to tell.

~winehiker

[Editor’s note: If you’re reading this post directly on my blog, one of those To-Do items may appear evident. I hope you like the new 3-column scheme and color format. Obviously I still have work to do. But at least now I’ll enjoy doing it!]

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 9:57 am and is filed under grape squeezins, technical stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.