Day: August 28, 2008

Why PCs are better than Macs

The unthinkable has happened.  My trusted, beloved laptop, which has served me faithfully for almost three years, has died.  I suspect it’s a problem with the motherboard.  While I was in Jordan, the power cord sometimes had trouble making contact with the contacts in the power socket on the back.  Now, it’s almost impossible to recharge my batteries.  I’d replace the part, but apparently it’s glued onto the motherboard, and besides that, the USB ports have stopped reading my flash drives, which makes me think that the problem is much bigger than just the power contacts.

So I’ve lost my laptop.  This is no small thing.  My computer is practically a part of my soul, like a sword to a samurai.  With it gone, I feel…lost.  The most valuable material possession I have in this world is my data–my journals, my stories, the things I’ve written–and all of those are on my laptop.

But get this.  When I knew for certain that my laptop was dying, I did an awesome little trick.  I turned it off, unscrewed the bottom, pulled out the hard drive (the physical hard drive), put it in a 2.5″ enclosure that I bought last  year, and accessed it from the FLSR computer like a normal USB mass storage device.  My freaking hard drive.  And then I transferred ALL of my data (the important stuff at least) to the FLSR computer, where it is now.

Boo yeah!  Not only is all my data–my stories, journals, and writings from the last three years of my life–safely backed up in a place where I can easily get to it, but it didn’t cost me a dime.  The enclosure cost me about $30, but I’ve had it for a while.  If I were to take my laptop into a store to have the data pulled off of the hard drive, it would cost my upwards of $400.  Youch!  But because my computer is a PC, I can take it apart and put it back together again by myself if I have to.

Now I have to save up for a new laptop.  I could have the motherboard replaced, but I think I’m reaching the point of diminishing returns with this computer.  It’s expensive to replace it, and once I do, something else is going to fail.  Besides, after three years, it’s about time for a new computer.

In the meantime, I can do everything I usually do on public computers, except for photos and podcasts.  If I’m lucky, I can figure out a way to do my photography in one of the computer labs on campus (the photo safari is down!  It’s so sad!), and I have an old desktop that I might set up in my room for downloading stuff.  We’ll see how it goes.

But my data is safe!  Woo hoo!  I am SO relieved.

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Thoughts on being busy

I was browsing through some Facebook notes I’d imported from my old blog (now nonexistent), and I came across an old book review I wrote for Momo by Michael Ende. Awesome book–I recommend it 110%. However, the thing that got to me was what I’d written about how the book made me think about how I was living my life back then:

I don’t regret being busy. I’m VERY busy all the time (especially this spring, with Poli Sci 200 giving me a major beating). There are days where I wake up at 6:00 am and I don’t stop running from one place to the next until the evening. Sometimes, it’s true, I let the world around me just sweep me around and control my life. But I don’t think that things would be much better if I just cut out all the things that I’m doing.

I was home this time last year, not working or taking classes–I didn’t really have any responsibilities at all. And I was miserable. I felt like I wasn’t being productive enough, and I looked forward to coming out to BYU for the summer term because then I’d have something to do. Now that I’ve been really busy for a year, I’ve found that I really like it. It’s good to have a lot of challenging projects and responsibilities. I’m doing what I love and even though it can be difficult, I’m having a lot of fun. Work hard and play hard.

My sister Kate sometimes has problems with being overworked or underworked. When she’s busy, she’s so busy that it makes her anxious and she feels overstressed. We tend to fight a lot when that happens. So then, she takes time off to try and recharge, but she gets anxious because she feels that she’s unproductive. So then she fills up her schedule with things to do, until she’s overstressed again.

I think that the problem isn’t a matter of whether or not you’re always busy, so much as what you make time for. The people in the book got to the point where they figured that good things were something they’d only have time for sometime in the future, so they spent all their time doing menial things, and ignored their friends, families, and anything that was fun or enjoyable.

Life should be kind of like a car battery–once you’re up and doing something, it recharges itself. If I were only busy with things that drained me, I’d go crazy. It would just feel wrong, and I would make some major changes in my life. But if I actually enjoyed all of the things I was doing, and am doing, right now, I would know that things are working the way they should.

And ultimately, I think that that’s the message that Ende was trying to get out. Enjoy your life right now, where you are, and make time for the people around you.

This really gets to me for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I don’t think I’ve been following my own advice this last year. Ouch.

Second, I want to refocus and spend more of my free time doing creative things and/or spending time with people. The advice here about prioritizing really resonates with me.

Third, it’s totally true. Life should be just like a car battery, and if it isn’t, you’re doing something wrong. Trying to get stimulation without putting in any effort is just wrong, even if it’s innocent.

I guess that’s one thing I learned from my experience last semester writing that novel. It took a LOT more effort to sit down and write the thing than it did to play computer games or waste time on the internet, but the satisfaction it brought was a lot better.

At the same time, I didn’t spend enough time getting out and making friends. But really, it’s the same thing. Do you fill your life with busywork or do you make yourself busy with the things that really matter? They take a lot more effort, but give much better satisfaction.

I arrived in Provo a couple of days ago, and I’m still somewhat disoriented. I’ll have some new writing goals, though, before school starts. I’ll also have some new ideas for where I want to take this blog, and I’ll write about that tomorrow.