“The RoseBouquet”

On Saturday I decided to install a brand new 160GB hard drive into my computer. Of course I did a good backup first. But while I was quite sure I’d be done by supper time, I was at it all day Saturday and all evening,

Oh, I had promised to create a Christmas letter for a client and I managed to keep that promise by using a Knoppix LIVE DVD to go online to fetch back some of the photos I had already prepared for them, and he had called about a revised text he’d sent me by email. I fetched that from online too, and did the letter over that I had already done for them on Friday evening. Over the phone we walked through another few edits, and finally he was happy with it, so I could dust my hands of that job - done in time!

Sunday afternoon I was sure I had the right cable configurations at last, and went at it again. No go. BIOS (the bare skeleton part of a computer) would not recognize either of my hard drives. Not the old 40GB one I had been using, nor the new 160GB drive. I knew the jumper cable settings can be tricky, but I tried every possible configuration in the innards of the computer box, booting up again and again, only to find I couldn’t go on to do a fresh install of my operating system. I’m now very familiar with the inside of a computer box and not afraid of it any more.

In the evening I used the Knoppix DVD again to bypass the hard drives and go online to send off an email I do every Sunday night for some missionary friends.

Monday morning I decided this was long enough. I had to take it back to the place where I’d bought the hard drive and see if they could set the cables right. They wouldn’t let me wait for it so I went shopping for thinsulate. Finally I called them after lunch to learn it had been done in half an hour. I could pick it up. Off I hurried to fetch it home again.

Only, now I couldn’t even use the DVD drive to go online to look for more advice! They had taken out the 40GB drive saying it was no good. But I still couldn’t install or anything! Oh-GRRR!!!

I tried phoning some of the computer techies in the yellow pages who promise to come to your home to fix things. One wanted to charge over $100/hour if I had a mac or a linux computer! Whoa! Finally about 3 pm. One man had the patience to let me describe my problem and he observed that if my computer was 8-9 years old, there is no way the motherboard could handle a drive of 160GB size. Now that was something I had not considered. But it was the most sensible thing I’d heard all day.

The conclusion I quickly came to was - I’m sunk! I need a new computer! My livlihood depends on it!

What’s more, I had no time to lose. I took a quick look into my account book to see what I have in the bank. Yikkes, only $339 to spare, and I’d hoped to use that for furniture and computers for my new business. But I needed a computer to do my work. So I bundled up for the third time and headed out to the first computer store just two blocks away that also have second hand computers - sometimes. (By now the snow storm was blowing in earnest). Well, they had one that might do… but it had less capacity than the one I’d been using.

I decided to move on. I found another store downtown I’d heard about; they would build a computer for me over 5-7 days, and their lowest price model was over $400. I shook my head and moved on. Across the city to ComputerTrends. I’ve been reading their ads in the weekly flyers I get. They had two models in my price range. The lower priced one had no DVD burner - which I need to install my operating system. The next one was $325. It came with a new keyboard and mouse and speakers. I checked around in case they had anything else, and seeing the storm outside, decided against trekking to any more stores. I bought it. The sales man carried the box to my car, and I was home by 5 pm.

Then I spent the whole evening setting up. The installation of my new SUSE 10.3 only took about an hour, but then I had to copy all my backed up files into it too, and fine tune some personal settings. I still have more fine-tuning to do, and to install special programs I use, but - hallelujah, I praise God that I’m up and running this morning and able to write this RoseBouquet after all.

And my dear BBN online radio is playing Christmas music for me again. Thank You, Lord!

At this time of year some people come down with severe depression. A few years ago I wrote a series of articles on this, and made an ebook which you can download for free. See more below in RUTHES ROSES, where I have part of the first article for you.