Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Thinking Time

Three AM.  A care giver opens the door and peeks in.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi, Chcuk.  Are you okay?"

"I sure am," I reply cheerily. 

I am up because I want to  be.  This is prime thinking time. No TV, no call to meals, fo announcements by an activity director trying to entertain the old folks.  Just quiet.

Today I won't burden you with what I am thinking about.  No stream of consciousness rambling.  Well, except this...

The computer takes forever these days to start up.  There is so much junk it has to wade through.  From time to time I purge the list of programss and throw out things I seldom use, and yet there are hundreds of strange things I do no dare remove.  Updates with weird names like COMZin22ia.1.  I have no idea what that is, nor how it got there, nor what it does.  I only know if I delete it, tomorow my clock will run backwards and AOL will say "Hola, Usted habana communicado."

I rent a garage sized storage bin that I use to hold my accumlated junk.  Things I dare not part with because, I tell myself, "I may need that someday."  My Ham radio, for instance. It served me well, but I will never use it again. But I keep it.  So it is with my computer.  It is stuffed with copies of letters I wrote to the manager in 2000 for example.  My, it is fun to see what angst I had then by rereading it, when I am looking for stuff to throw out.  I'll just keep it, for now.

I paused here.

To think.  To let my mind wander.

An that's okay, too.

I guess now, I'll go back to bed before the caregiver pops in again, though I hate to waste this prime thinking time.

(Pardon me if I don't proof-read this tonight.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes Chuck, I was up for 'thinking time' this morning as well.... Around 4:00 CST to be exact. Many things on my mind these days. Some important, some not. Sometimes, it is just the thing you need to do...
Jackie

Anonymous said...

Goodmorning Chuck!     My computer takes a long time to boot up also.     If I get a new computer someday I will have a dedicated small external hard drive with a fresh copy on it.     That way if I become totally frustrated I will have all my important files on another HD and can start over.     But for now that is just amateur dreaming.    I got so involved thinking about everything with my new purchase 2 years ago and it was just a headache.     Now the computer works so I just let it be and the 80 GB HD is staying 85% empty with my downloaded photos on my external HD along with asundry other numerous etc. etc.     mark

Anonymous said...

Hey Chuck,

Two thoughts regarding your slow startup.

1) the quantity of software loaded on your HD is probably not at fault -- startup doesn't (to my knowledge) look at the data before booting.

2) a common culprit is the collection of applications that run in the background. You can get a sense of what's happening in this area by looking at the icons opposite the "START" button on that bar most people keep at the bottom of their screen. If there are lots of icons, you may be waiting at startup for them to load.

Getting rid of unwanted software should properly be done via your control panel, using the "remove programs" feature. This applications not only disables the program, but it retraces the steps taken when you first installed it -- meaning it goes to many locations in memory and removes files needed to make the program run on your machine.

I imagine you are already familiar with defragmentation. I think the de-frag program is in the utilities folder among all of your programs. Some users report that a defrag after an extended period of no maintenance has a significant effect on not only startup, but general operations.

Good luck.

DB

Oh, one more tip:  Use the F1 key when you need help. If you hit F1 and then enter "defragmentation" in the search box, you'll get much more info than you ever wanted on that topic.  -- DB

Anonymous said...

I loved the hola usted thingee there..peretty funny. BAM