Darren Blair

Shop the Insanity

Quick note: as a reminder for those who are not aware or have forgotten, fan voting is still open for the 2018 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; the link is here: https://www.rockhall.com/fan-vote/2018-fan-vote . You can vote for five artists per ballot, but only one ballot per day and you must somehow log in (either via Facebook or a new login for that site) to have your vote counted.

Well, I had another bit of a jolt last night. I was running my usual anti-malware scan on my laptop, and so while it was running I went to have a late dinner. About halfway through, I went to check the computer and found that the scan was done. As the scan came up clean and I had nothing else to do on the system, I closed out the program and clicked the button to have the computer begin shutting down.

With the system beginning the shutdown process, I went back over to where I had been eating, content to let the system go through the motions. Just as I was about to sit down, however, I heard the distinct sound of the system throwing up an error message. However, as the shutdown process was already at work, the message disappeared just as I arrived back over there. Cue me spending the next few minutes hoping that the error message was just something that didn’t shut down properly. I’m back on the system now, and it’s “so far, so good”.

I think the issue, though, is that when it comes to computers and other such technology, I’m basically rather well behind the curve. When I was growing up, the family computer was a Commodore 64. Load=”*”,8,1 was all I needed to know in order to make the computer run whatever video game I wanted or the word processing software we had. Or, I could just hit “enter” enough times to scroll down so that I could use the Commodore key to doodle. Yes folks, the 64 was command-line. GUI? It was this miraculous thing when I encountered it on a computer in middle school.

Windows 95? Been there; done that. Ditto for 98. Yes, I still cringe when I see a “Blue Screen Of Death” because I know what it means. XP was the world to me, and with as long-lasting as it was I kinda imagined it was the pinnacle. It was always just there, waiting for me to pay it a visit. The less said about Vista, the better; it was what powered the laptop we all chipped in to get my mom, and so we all paid for it again by spending hour upon hour having to do trouble-shooting and tech support. Windows 7 powered my previous laptop, which is what I used when I first started writing. My current system is 8.1, and holding.

10? I have no idea what I’d do if I had to deal with Windows 10. Yes, there was a learning curve with each subsequent version, and I overcame it… after a while. Save for Vista, each version was near enough to each other that I had no issues. But 10? With how comparatively radical the upgrades and changes are? The day will come, even if I’d rather it not.

Then again, that’s life: you’ve got to adapt to whatever comes, eh? As the saying goes, the only constant in life is change. We can’t always live in the past, no matter how much better it may seem from time to time. Time marches on, and so must we.