Archive for month: March, 2018

It doesn’t matter what computer you write on as long as you write, but my Acer tower computer and I have been thorough a lot. It has i3 core cpu and was running windows 7 when I got it. I manage to get it upgraded to Windows 8, then Windows 10. The latest major Windows 10 update did it in. The major Windows 10 update would not load. Ended up downloading a Windows program that forced the update onto the computer. There was no working on the computer while as the update loaded, but it loaded.

For a month the major update had been trying to load, but never would fully load. Sometimes It would get to 98% installed then hang, forever. I left it on overnight but it never got pass the 98% mark. Other times it would act like it installed, then within hours it would start the update over again. During all these previous updates I got no error messages, no indication that the update loaded or not.

Once the major update was loaded the machine worked for a full day without Windows updater trying to force the major Windows 10 update on my machine.

Then I got an update alert. A security update was going to be loaded on the machine. I had no options to delay the update or to do as Windows advises to make a back up of the latest install.

The update demanded a reset. The computer screen went black, the machine beeped. The hard drive is doing something, but the screen remains black. For hours it remains black.  I turned the machine off then back on. Just a black screen. Not the blue screen of death, it’s black. Day after day I would turn the machine on, but no change.

My computer savvy friends say; install Linux.

I have a backup computer. It’s a laptop and newer than the Acer. I haven’t been in a Starbucks in months. I eat out once a week with friends for $10.00 dollars or less. I get one glass of ice tea at the writers weekly  meeting and bring a doughnut if I haven’t had lunch since the coffee shop is too expensive for their treats.

By cutting back I was able to buy a low end i5 laptop with a previous generation cpu. That’s what I’m writing this on. Windows has not stopped me from writing.

When I get the time I will load Linux on the old machine, but it won’t be the same. You can write and do a lot of things with the Linux operating system.

Still I miss the old machine. It was big, slow, but it came through and a wrote a lot of words on that machine.

Stay strong, write on, and I miss you old friend.

Professor Hyram Voltage

I’m nostalgic, but I don’t glorify the past.

A friend of mine lost his house and almost everything he had in the Thomas fire in Ventura, CA. That got me to doing a photo inventory of every thing I own. And I mean everything including the box of tooth picks in the kitchen drawer.

Part of this inventory is scanning old photographs. It’s a slow process to scan in shoe box after shoe box of photos. I have big feet. I haven’t worn size 13 shoes since I was in junior high and my feet have only gotten bigger. But at least I don’t have to wear a Nike NBA player size 19 shoe. But with the photos scanned and saved to a thumb drive that is stored in a plastic bag inside a metal box and in a safe place I will have the photos come fire or flood.

When I scan these old photos in I can’t help think back about how almost everything I knew is gone or has changed so much as it is almost unrecognizable.

I had a reason to visit the city near the old reservation I grew up on, so I took a quick trip to visit the grade school I went to as a little kid. It wasn’t the same. Almost all the old building were gone or over shadowed by new buildings. It’s good to see a poor school get new building and to have expanded for more room. But I miss the old tree that sat in the corner of the school where we had Easter Egg hunts, or sat under for some special classes. The school was not air conditioned back then and it was cool under that tree. You can’t have a tree on school grounds now, some kid will climb it and fall and hurt himself.

Building don’t make a school. I remember when I was very young and the cook for the school retired. The food quality went way down. She cooked like my mother cooked. When she retired the food became plain simple food, not a meal. For some of the kids in the school that was the best meal of the day. My mother got her recipe for salmon patties from the cook. At school when we had salmon patties if you found the bone in your patty you got a quarter. That was a lot of money back then (two and half comic books).

The freeway bypasses the little town, I grew up outside of, now and the town is fading away. There isn’t a gas station in the town any more. Gasoline is so much cheaper just across the state line a quarter of a mile away.

There is still a remnant of the business my father built from the ground up, but it is fading away too.

Do I think the past was better than now. No. As my cardiologist told me recently. Twenty or thirty year ago, she used to spend over half her time in the hospital trying to save the lives of people that were having heart attacks. She wasn’t able to save many. It hurt her. Now she can try and stop people from having a heart attack in the first place and if they have one there is a good chance she can save them. I’m alive today because of those changes.

Still, I don’t want to lose those memories preserved by those old pictures. Even the simple things like a couple of old black and white pictures from high school.

The past wasn’t so good, but like today we can, step by step; difficult steps, make it better. We can make the whole world better. But it will take work.

Stay strong, write on, and work for a better world.

Professor Hyram Voltage