It's upgrade time

I'm steeling myself for an upcoming internet blackout. My husband has ordered parts to upgrade his hot-rod desktop computer, and in about a week when they arrive, he will dismantle the beast and put in all the new parts.

And then nothing will work.

Please understand, this is NOT a slam against my husband. He knows more about computers than I will ever imagine I could, and he's a retired electrical engineer who's been messing with these boxes since - well, since they've existed. He builds his own computers. But when you upgrade, it's ALWAYS SOMETHING.

We've been through this before. It never goes as smoothly as you think it should and he always has to cope with irritating unexplained problems. He always solves them, but it's a hassle. Please don't ask me the details - I don't ask, and I don't want to know. Around the mid-90's, I gave up my complimentary subscription of InfoWeek at work and never again tried to keep up with the fast moving computer industry. If anything goes wrong with the laptop, I walk into his office and say "Oh, honey?"

He's also moving his desktop to Windows 7, so that adds a little extra fillip of mystery to the process. He told me I should also upgrade my Vista platform so all three computers would be on the same operating system, but I'm frankly terrified to try that. Will everything I run work on the new Windows version? Who knows?

I even cringe when I download updates. I'm a strong proponent of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." In fact, don't even touch it.

It's worse than we thought

The new power supply arrived for my husband's computer yesterday and he installed it. Well---- the power supply WAS bad, but it took some stuff with it when it died. The boot sector of the main hard drive is trashed, and we won't know what else until he starts rebuilding the whole thing. He reloaded the operating system and it just circles and circles and can't run. He was going to built a new computer, anyway, but not this soon. He probably lost the contents of his main drive; we won't know about the backup drive until the computer is up and running again. He had restored a huge pile of family photos, taken so many pictures and videos himself, and they all might be gone if the backup drive was also trashed in the death throes of the power supply. We have our fingers crossed.

Play taps for my husband's computer

I was in bed watching television about 1 a.m. last night with all the bedroom lights out. The only light on in the house was the floor lamp next my husband's computer desk in the other bedroom. Suddenly I heard the UPS at his computer start to screech. I jumped up to go silence the little screamer and found my husband sitting at his computer with a dark monitor. The floor lamp next to his desk was still on, though, so I knew the circuit breaker hadn't tripped. "The power must have gone out," he said. "I thought we had unplugged that lamp from the UPS." (At one point we had run out of outlets and plugged the lamp into the power strip on the UPS, but I changed that last year.)

"The power's not off," I replied, " my TV's still playing."

"Then I guess my computer's power supply just died."

OH NO! (Small pause for panic.)

When the computer went off suddenly, it evidently caused a surge that triggered the UPS. I reset it and he tried to restart the computer. Dead as 4 o'clock. Oh, well, he said, we'll have to look at it in the morning.

This morning, he determined that indeed, the power supply had gone crispy and he has to buy another one. Good luck finding one in town. Looks like we'll have to mail order it. That means no computer for him for a week (he hates trying to squint at my laptop screen - he has a 28" monitor). So I still have the wireless network but can't print anything - his computer was the printer server.

He was meaning to rebuild his computer this spring, but hadn't selected all the parts. Well, now he will have a new power supply for it, and a big one- he's thinking 600 watts. This will be the third power supply replacement in his current computer. His computer is a real workhorse and he runs the living daylights out of it. Photo manipulation and restoration, video rendering and heavy duty gaming, running dual processors and a hot rod video card. Most people can get by with the same computer for years. He bought me this Toshiba laptop two years ago to replace my Acer, but I really didn't need a new one. For what I do the old one was fine; he just thought it was a little weak. He normally builds a complete upgrade every 2 to 2 1/2 years and by the time he does, he really needs to.

If you hear someone moaning and whimpering in my neighborhood, it's him. He's in withdrawal.

Not quite as computer-inept as I thought

Check out the sidebar - I added a slideshow of my Project Linus quilts this morning and I didn't have to ask anyone a question! That's pretty good for me. I used to honestly try to keep up on new PC developments, until one day I just said "Enough". I learn what I need to learn at the time I need it, and I absolutely don't do any reading up "for fun" because it isn't.

Computers aren't fun for me. They're a tool. Like a hammer. I ran analytical software at work before I retired and I prepared calculations and other documents, but all this web hoo-hah? Nuh-no. To put it in perspective: when I started college in engineering, we used slide rules. I don't own an I-Pod, my cellphone doesn't take pictures and I still own a turntable, although it isn't hooked up at the moment. (Hi, I'm an old dog, nice to meet you.)

The slideshow is only rotating pictures of five quilts, but it will be more interesting when I complete a few more. I'm sewing as fast as I can!