The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Gary Taig editor@melbpc.org.au |
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In this issue I've reprinted an article from the May issue, this year. Judging by the tone of some incoming correspondence in recent weeks, it's clear that some beginners didn't read the article, and obvious that others didn't even see it. I sincerely hope that many members read the article and made it their business to obtain a copy of the Monthly Disc, if they didn't already have one. The tutorial that Bruno Dik wrote about is so good that I might just rerun that every couple of months, or perhaps work out some other way of promoting it. One that uses up less space.
This month TECS and Standard Computers each offer their 15 hottest items for your consideration while assembling that Christmas Shopping List. Along with them I hope this makes some of your shopping a little easier.
Chaos reigned for the last few hours. As I write this it's clear I won't have the time to fill a whole page, there is no time even for this little bit, but I must explain what happened so that those who are deeply affected and hurt will at least understand. There is a serious lesson in this.
It's noon Saturday as I write and the appointment with the printing press has been continually pushed out since Monday, five days ago. On Monday morning before the world awoke, either someone sent a powerful blast of electricity through my part of town, or the supply was interrupted for just long enough to do some damage. I was able to turn everything back on and access everything except the server through my main working machine. That machine was, if I can put it this way, the hub of excitement in my office.
Every conceivable activity happened through it, or from it. Suddenly the desktop was unrecognisable as I was forced to log on as the local administrator and try to work out which programs were or were not available any more. An hour with a Systems Administrator later that day failed to resolve the issue and from that moment onwards, completing PC Update and keeping the appointment with prepress became a long, drawn out affair of extremely long days, constantly interrupted by "Oh dammit! can't do that" accompanied by language that would be off colour in a lumber camp.
The long and short of it is that I'm running from a new machine which is loaded with new software, maintaining a flimsy, untested cooperation with the rest of the network. PC Update was okay, until about 12 hours ago. I had a few hours work to do, including writing this page, doing Random Access, checking some other material that was pretty much ready to go and then browse through the pages picking up those little things you miss during, even during a normal production period and this one has been nowhere near normal.
Today that luxury evaporated as a few extra troubles came to the front, delays set in during the night, eyes stung and eyelids began to sag and when the birds began chirping at dawn, I realised there would be no sleep before prepress. With the printer gently prodding, at 11.00 am I had to make a decision and it was clear that an almost completed PC Update was going to be printed this afternoon. Already some pages are now printed and they await this page to complete the final section.
Apologies to Melissa Dunk for not getting those few small corrections done; to John Swale who stayed up all night recently doing November meeting Random Access only to see his effort not used this month. There was one other but the brain isn't working now...
The Lesson?
All that could have been avoided had I taken the time to solve the power supply problems that I must address when buying one or more UPS (Uninterruptible Power supply). I have backups coming out of my ears, cloned drives, a host of protection, all useless in these freak circumstances.
Do you rely heavily upon your computer system?
Reprinted from the November 2006 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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