Mandy Davis - Diva of Deception

Mandy Davis - Diva of Deception - is a professional close up magician working for banquets, dinners, receptions, weddings, bar/batmitzvahs, private parties etc. A member of The Inner Magic Circle, she serves on their ruling Council and currently holds several posts. . Mandy is also a member of Equity and twice honoured with the Society of American Magicians' Presidential Citation.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

COMPUTER BLUES II

You take it for granted don't you?

Sitting down every morning to mindlessly delete all the penis enlargement ads or the selections of drugs available at the click of a button... reading the emails that actually are addressed to you from people you know.

Tell me - how did we manage without Google? Everything you want to know is there plus many things you didn't! Every twist and turn of your day can involve googling something that will improve life in general.... where is that restaurant Joe mentioned last night? Which is the best way to get to the next appointment? I must send flowers to friends in the US... I must buy that book they were talking about on the radio.. It's all there at the click of a google button - and then it isn't!

All I did was reboot, honest! I heard the start up sound, I heard certain programs whirring away and even the final opening of Skype which always signals the completion of 'restart' but... nothing! A bewildering black screen showing no light at the end of the imac tunnel. If in doubt - reboot again. So I did - and still nothing.

It was the end of the line for my five year old machine. I'd overworked it to extreme and it had decided enough was enough in spite of the extra memory and the recent clean up of files it had breathed its last. I needed to find a repair man - but I couldn't google it so had to rely on others t do that for me.

A mac specialist gave advice over the phone but it didn't help so he called back to make an appointment to visit.

'Tell me straight' I demanded, 'What are the chances of you coming over here and still telling me I have to buy a new one?' 'Extremely likely,' was his reply and so I knew what I had to do. I needed to look for a new computer - but I couldn't google it!

Eventually I did the only thing I could do - with no money available but a currently unused John Lewis store card in hand I drove down to Brent Cross and returned clutching the unlimited joys of a brand new machine with lots of exciting new on screen gadgets.

Now came a new problem - how to get the information, and some old familiar applications, from the old onto the new when you can't see what you are doing. It's easy, they said, just connect the two by firewire. So I tried but a photo of the backs of both proved that one had a 400 fitting and the other an 800 although the wire was the same at both ends - they don't warn you about this anywhere. A new cable had to be bought but this still didn't do the trick - and desktops are heavy to carry through heavy shopping centres to Mac Stores however helpful they profess to be.

In the end a PC experienced hardware friend came over and performed an autopsy, removed the hard drive and connected it, eventually. I had to check that he had the 'special screwdriver' that a friend in the US advised was needed. Turned out that he did have this but was thankful I'd mentioned it as he would not have brought it with him. The outside screws were quite normal but once you got inside.... However now I could transport most, but not all, of what I wanted and needed.


So here I am - a new computer with lots of things to play with. I haven't had time to do much investigating yet but I'm back with my beloved Google to answer everything once more. What more can a girl need?

5 Comments:

Blogger Brian Sibley said...

I envy you! I installed an update of Safari and Firefox and now neither of them will open in anything under 20 mins. I might go back to using books!

Word Verification for this post: 'expectin'. Says it all!

2:19 pm  
Blogger Diva of Deception said...

Oh no! That is the trouble with a lot of the updates - they don't explain that you need a more powerful machine in order to use them.

What is word verification?

3:24 pm  
Blogger Brian Sibley said...

It's those letters you have to type in to leave a comment on my (or your) blog!!

This time it's 'torster', which is a machine used in the North of Britain to make toast!

3:27 pm  
Blogger SharonM said...

Is it possible to remember the time before we had computers and what we did with our lives then?

We certainly managed to function and I suspect suffered a lot less from RSI - and computer lack of cooperation-related stress.

I suppose we must have read more, socialised more and chatted on the phone and wrote letters.

I say suppose, because I can't really remember.

I wish you good health to use your new PC and that, unlike mine at present, it remains free of trojan horse and worm viruses.

7:38 pm  
Blogger Diva of Deception said...

Thank you Sharon - your good wishes are very kind. I have to say that, from what I've been told, Macs rarely get viruses and worms thankfully...

but I treasure your sentiment as I'd hate to be the first! :)

12:27 pm  

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