Aren't computers meant to SAVE time?

Before I went into hospital, I bought a new PC off ebay. Just the CPU – the idea being that I would transfer all my stuff from the old PC to the new, and use the old monitor, keyboard and mouse (which were all reasonably new). Simple, yes? No. Snag number 1 was that I hadn’t paid much attention to the specification of the new CPU – the processor is fast and there is plenty of RAM etc., but it takes a USB mouse and keyboard. Some while back at the previous PC upgrade time, I had been given a special switching device that enables you to run two computers using the same keyboard, mouse and monitor, but the new PC wasn’t compatible with this. I spent much of Monday sorting out a spare monitor and buying a very cheap usb keyboard and mouse. Finally both computers were running and it was time to start transferring stuff across. Snag number 2: I couldn’t fathom out how to get them talking to each other across the home network. That required Dave’s expertise, and now he’s moved out into his new home, he wasn’t around to do it for a couple of days. Meanwhile I decided to start loading software onto the new PC, starting with the programme I use to manage the finances. I bought it back in 1997, and it came on a floppy disk. Snag number 3: the new PC has a blank where you’d normally expect to find the floppy disk drive. Oh well – I could copy the programme from the old PC via a flashcard memory stick, yes? All seemed to be going well until I tried to install it, and it was missing a file. For some reason, it didn’t even occur to me to search the old PC for the missing file! That obvious solution took Dave less than 2 minutes – when I’d spent maybe a couple of hours trying to get the thing sorted out. Galling. I think by then I’d got myself into a somewhat negative frame of mind, disbelieving my own resourcefulness. Even finding my way around the new operating system more slowly than I would wish was knocking my confidence.

I wanted to transfer all my old email messages (from three separate ‘identities’) from the old PC to the new. I managed to do that once before, and really didn’t anticipate it would be a problem. It wasn’t – for Dave. After I’d struggled with it for several hours and failed, Dave took about 4 minutes to set the first identity transfer. It took a long time to download across the network, but finally the first identity was complete with email addresses and old messages. By then Dave had gone home. He does things so quick – click, click, click – that it’s hard to follow, so today despite my best efforts and about three hours-worth of trying, I haven’t managed to transfer the emails from the other two identities. This led to an interesting conversation with Vic. I wondered if subconsciously I’m sabotaging my own efforts because of some ambivalence. I find myself wondering WHY am I so keen to hang on to old email messages or newsgroup posts. Wasn’t this a wonderful chance to start afresh, a whole ‘clean slate’? We joked about how Vic hoards ‘things’ – the garage is literally packed out with things that ‘might come in useful one day’ – and I hoard ‘words’, paperwork or information. Just as he can lay his hand on almost anything in the garage despite the considerable amount stored there, so I can generally lay my hands on the information I seek. Old email messages represent history – if I forget when a family event happened, I can find out with a quick search through old mail messages. Maybe buried in my subconscious is still the ancient dream of becoming ‘a writer’ (in reverent tone!), along with the belief that somewhere in all these saved words are just the ones I need to bring a book to life. As I write this journal entry, I’m still undecided whether to get Dave back to complete the transfer process for me.