One of the reasons my AR participation had slowed way down was the computer at home would sometimes work, sometimes not. When I needed to work from home, I developed a work around the issues by using harsh language and just abruptly shutting the computer down. Then, I'd give it time to consider the hardship it was causing me and would turn it on again. Sometimes that would take care of the issue and if not, more of the same.
With AR while I was trying to write a post it was like the Executrix IBM typewriters from the 80s. Don't lie to me, I know many of you understand what I'm talking about! If you are a fast typist, it wasn't difficult to outrun the machine's capabilities. You'd do the touch typing thing...yes, that is a thing to be able to type with all 10 fingers and never look at the keyboard. Anyway, you'd finish typing your thought or whatever handwritten copy you were working from and then have to wait while the Executrix caught up with you. That's what I was dealing with trying to work in AR. So, I'd use the harsh language and computer turn off trick except slowly but surely the trick was working less and less.
Someone reminded me that a good test of insanity was doing the same thing over and over, getting the same bad results and then wash, rinse and repeat. I'm not an idiot, much of my work was done at the office with the good computer...or so I thought. I started to remember exactly how much I also do at home. Finally I broke down and did what I hate doing, shopping for a computer. Not that much shopping actually. I wasn't interested in going it alone...ordering something online and hoping I'd get all of my data transferred correctly. Nope, not for me. I went to the Staples in Waynesville and was shocked to find how few desktop pcs are available to consider in the store. At any rate, I selected one and made an educated decision on RAM, storage, battery, ports, blah blah blah. Doesn't matter...everything has more than what I had.
I had the old computer in the car and gave it to the Staples tech and then waited for a few days while everything was transferred and my emails trained to download from the server. One problem though? I'd been flirting with disaster not taking care of this sooner. I'd been using an email service called Thunderbird which the tech told me was no longer "supported", whatever that means. What it mainly meant to me was those all important emails from the home computer hadn't been transferred. The tech saw I was devastated and said he'd continue to work on it for me. In the meantime, the old computer quit booting up. The tech is researching a way to do some kind of emergency boot and at least try to save them to a flash drive.
All is not lost. The office computer has the same emails so I could always disconnect and take that computer to Staples to save the emails but the point is...it isn't normal for a computer to be as contrary as I allowed the home computer to behave. Shame on me for not dealing with it sooner. It won't happen again. Everything could have suffered, my attitude in particular! With the two computers I do have a redundant system but even those need kind and loving care and lots of back up!
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