Song of the Geek

Two 1gb memory sticks have been ordered, as has a new hard drive. I tried to fire up the old desktop today to make sure I had everything off it I wanted, and it was ALL dead. Nothing left to do but go through its clothes and look for loose change. And so, of course, I wrote a poem, if “poem” is the word I want.

SONG OF THE GEEK
by Marian Allen

My computer wasn’t loading
Wasn’t booting up the system
Wasn’t booting, but was hanging,
Hanging, showing module failure.

A corruption in the OS?
After all, it was Mandriva.
Known, Mandriva, to be buggy.
So I reinstalled Mandriva.

Days went by without a problem
Then, once more, bootloader problems.
Many were the online fora
I perused in search of answers

Many were the Linux gurus’
Brains I picked in vain for guidance.
Many were the Linux flavors
I downloaded, but all failed me. 

Maybe if I start with “format”….
Wiped the drive and all my data.
Nothing but Mandriva loaded.
Who knew hard drives mate forever? 

Now I’m thinking, “Hard drive failure.”
Now I’ve ordered up a new one.
Now I’ve ordered RAM sticks mighty.
Mighty RAM sticks, nice bare hard drive.

Soon, I will install the hard drive,
Pop in place the mighty RAM sticks.
Soon, I will install the Linux —
Mint, Ubuntu, XUbuntu —

Possibly some other distro.

But it will not be Mandriva.

Stay tuned, boys and girls.

Meanwhile, I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies with the promise of blood on the countertop and at The Write Type on the subject of Sue Grafton scraping poop off her shoes.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character has to replace a tool he or she has used for a long time with success and satisfaction.

MA

About

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but now live in the woods in southern Indiana. Though I only write fiction, I love to read non-fiction. The more I learn about this world, the more fantastic I see it is.

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One thought on “Song of the Geek

  1. Holly Jahangiri

    August 21, 2012 at 9:51am

    Oh, dear! Well, sounds from your jolly good sense of humor about all this like you’ve got good backups of all the important stuff SOMEWHERE. Last time my PC did this sort of thing, though, I bought it new RAM and found it a new drive, and …

    Now I have a new PC. The new RAM (which was older type) sits idle on a shelf unless my husband’s found it a good home, and the drive – who knows. But it’s okay. For about twice the price of all that, I bought a whole system.

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  2. Author

    Marian Allen

    August 21, 2012 at 9:56am

    Urgh! What turned out to be wrong with your system? Did you ever narrow it down? Yeah, I’m afraid I’ll stick in all this good stuff and it’ll be the motherboard.

    Thing is, this one has a CD drive, a DVD reader/burner, a multi-card reader, three USB ports on the front and — are you ready for this? — a floppy disk drive! Amazing! I don’t want to give that up, or shop around for something with the right number and sizes of bays, and recreating it would send the price out of my ballpark.

    Here’s hoping!

    MA

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  3. Jane

    August 21, 2012 at 10:56am

    Hi. Good news! I don’t have a 3.5 disk reader anymore, but there is a very cheap alternative:
    To wit, a 3.5 reader which connects to your computer via USB.
    My (VERY) old computer died without rebooting, but I had all the books backed up on 3.5’s. The reader is very easy to use: it’s just like the ones that were on the inside, but now it’s on the outside, hanging by its USB tail.
    Da-Dahhhh!

    Permalink  ⋅ Reply
    • Author

      Marian Allen

      August 21, 2012 at 1:35pm

      Mom has one of those. But I already have one built in to this case, so I prefer not to have to buy one. ~cheap cheap~ 😉

      I’m SO GLAD you were able to save the writing!!!

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  4. Sarah Reece

    August 22, 2012 at 8:22am

    My desktop PC was becoming quite an irritant couple of years back with something or the other going bad every second day, so I switched to a laptop but somehow couldn’t give away my desktop (my first super intelligent machine ;)).

    Recently issues were cropping up in my laptop as well, but luckily it was still in warranty period (just 10 more days to go before the warranty would have ended), so I got it all changed – motherboard, keypad, display, fan; also added 4gb RAM. It’s almost a new machine now. I glad I had to pay only for the additional memory that I bought, yay.

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    • Author

      Marian Allen

      August 22, 2012 at 8:48am

      Wow, 4gb of RAM…. That’s twice what my mainboard will take! That’s the next upgrade, I guess, but I’m hoping this’ll do me for a while. I’ve replaced the mb once already; it’s probably due before too long.

      Permalink  ⋅ Reply

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