Page 170 of 524

The Macbook is (almost) Dead


The macbook’s history is a relatively short one. Purchased the day after Black Friday in 2006, it enabled me to go wireless, which ended up really facilitating the courtship of Rob and I after we met in mid-December of the same year. My desktop, also a mac, was inconveniently located in my bedroom. Inconvenient because Dee still slept in my bed and her bedtime was early. I couldn’t be on the computer once she was tucked in for the night.

But now, the macbook is near history. Problems this summer with the blue-tooth led to its being turned off and now it’s developed some sort of corruption that crashes the internet browser every five minutes or so. It roars like a jet plane most of the time due to a fan that rarely stops running.

Sigh.

I guess it is back to PC’s for me. We have a house full of computers – literally – and financially it makes no sense to run over to the Apple Store to replace the macbook.

I will be able to archive files on an external hard drive and transfer them. Which is good. I have way too much writing and three years of photos and music on it. Rob thinks he can wipe it and reprogram it, but there is no guarantee it will fix the issue or that he will have time anytime soon to do this.

“Do you want a new macbook?” he asked. “We could just replace my laptop and use it and the desktop.”

“And the netbook,” I added.

I like macs. User friendly in the extreme as long as nothing ever goes wrong. But when something glitches? Forget it. Steve Jobs has designed them to make it impossible for the ordinary person to identify and fix the issue. There is just no mechanism for diagnostics for the user. The physical make up even is such that a person needs special training and tools just to get into the dangit things.

Much as I would like one of the new desktops. They are too expensive and ultimately they all possess the same fatal flaws that keep user in thrall to the Genius Bar* at the Apple Store.

As long as my writing is saved and re-archived on another machine, it doesn’t matter what the machine is. Computers are computers. Tools to an end.

Alas then poor Macbook, I knew it well, Horatio.

*The Genius Bar is where you take your Apple products to be fixed by in-store techs, who often can do little more than replace or box up your mac to send away to be replaced/repaired. The “genius” part is how no one questions the fact that macs either work great or just intermittently and that by getting a customer in the store periodically, more product can usually be sold to them despite the defective by design nature.

Just Guessing – Is the Widda Board Down?


The server for the YWBB is in the Northeast somewhere. New York State, if I remember correctly. It has to be in some weather vulnerable area because if memory serves, every time the area got whacked by winter – as is the case today – the board took a powder. As it’s a volunteer thing for the most part, it sometimes took a while for the tender that is to notice and, depending on whether or not it was a power issue, get the board back up on line.

When the widda board goes dark, my site lights up. I get search hits and loads of page-views from widowed in varying degrees of withdrawal. Last night, my stats doubled thanks to a couple of widowed folk in Texas*.

I had a comment yesterday from a board member on a more recent post about grief not being a process. She personally found the board an immense help and that the nastier souls that roam there were few in number and more to be pitied than worried about. She isn’t wrong in her asessment. If a person sticks to the newly widowed forum and even the 6 to 12 month forum, most of the time all is well. It also helps to have a co-hort, people who arrived at the same time you did who were roughly within your widowhood time frame.

I was a late comer to the board. I didn’t have a clique. The existing ones in my time frame weren’t welcoming, and I had the added burden of having spent well over a year physically/emotionally on my own prior to Will’s death. I just came in with a whole different mindset and needs.

I made some friends. I met my husband Rob there. I won’t tell anyone not to go there, but I will caution people to keep their true feelings close to the vest lest someone (usually someone who is older in widow age and heavily invested in the community) take offense and decide to “school” you.

Being schooled makes me cranky. Being told my own feelings and experiences aren’t what I know they are … gets my back up. I wasn’t so “yoga” back in my board days. I let my fingers fly and I got myself in trouble. End of story.

But back to the point, yes the board is down. It will be back up because you know what they say about bad pennies? It applies to the board too.

So breathe. Follow this link if you like. It will take you to a widow blog whose blog list is all widowed. The blog community can be just, if not more, helpful.

Namaste.

*Yes, I can see you via StatCounter. State, city, ISP addy and what you are reading. I’ve had problems with board members linking me back in posts there for the purpose of having a little flaming fun at my expense. That kind of thing doesn’t amuse me. I get that I am a heretic, but I am allowed to be so on my own blog – which no one has to read if they feel threatened or offended by my pov on grief and moving on.

UPDATE: I learned via widda friend status update on Facebook today (Sunday) that the board will be down until Wednesday due to a winterstorm related power outage. Just thought I’d pass that along.

Opportunity


In Sondheim’s Into the Woods a line comes up again and again,

opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

In my opinion, it’s not a frequent visitor either though it does often seem to follow the old saying – when it rains, it pours.

On Tuesday I was offered a presenter’s spot at the upcoming Strathcona Writer’s Workshop in April, and on Wednesday, my yoga teacher asked if I felt ready to teach as she’d been offered a couple of after school jobs at local elementaries that she didn’t have time for herself.

Solid opportunities that I am taking, but it feels a bit odd coming from my background of conventional nine to five work. Free-lancing is such an artsy thing though in truth, I have become a rather artsy person in many ways. Manner, dress and mild distaste for the scrambling that goes on in the pursuit of lifestyle.*

It’s a fortunate space I occupy at the moment to be able to do what I want to do. Not a place I would have envisioned a decade ago. The Des Moines school district, where I taught, is very likely to savagely cut its teaching staff in the next 8 weeks. Even with twenty-three years of seniority, I might not have been safe from that and my mother and BFF tell me that the lay of the land is grim. I wonder at the twists and turns that spirited me away from all that and why.

My writer friend, Abby, once commented that it appeared I was meant to be here in Canada. Some higher purpose? Giving talks on blogging and teaching kids yoga? A dubious purpose, but it could be that humans have the idea of destiny and purpose confused with World of Warcraft questing.

Getting back out into some hippy mom version of the world of employment feels okay though.

*And I mean the choice of lifestyle that many of those around me engage in. I know from experience that for a lot of people work isn’t, and has never been, a matter of anything other than survival.