Nice relaxing massage — to the sound of lawnmowers

[fossilizing porpoise, below clay cliffs, Block Island, photo © 2009 J. Van West]

"That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence."
— Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You, p. 18


April 17, 2009

Jeff ran software updates on my laptop the other day. I can’t do this because it involves using the internet.

The next morning I went to use my computer and it was making this relentless clicking sound and was almost totally unresponsive. I went to restart it but it wouldn’t even do this even though I got to the dialog box. so I did a forced reboot and it was exactly the same situation.

When I went to play music — I had a client coming in and I use my cds copied to itunes for the music system — it took a while for the music to start, then it was having to buffer the song.

So I had no music for that client. Jeff took a crack at fixing it and said if I did a safe reboot that I should be able to use the computer. I did this before my client came in the next day and when I went to use Itunes there was no sound. I could play the songs but the volume wouldn’t work with the safe reboot.

Jeff took another look and said the computer is probably going to require a system reinstallation. Everything was working fine before. Then Software Update brings me up to the bleeding edge of softwareville, thanks to the all-nighters of programmers all over the world, and the computer doesn’t work anymore.