Enigma

This is just so weird. After my formerly "late" marvelous Toshiba Satellite was CLEARLY and CONSISTANTLY going eternally "bye-bye", giving me just enough time to get a new one at an amazingly bargain price, my mother suggested perhaps after not being used for a while, the old one would work again. Like our TV which was almost totally "kaput" and then spent a year in a somewhat damp garden shed, but which is now working just fine....amazingly, against all odds.
Now, I know computers and TVs do not have *souls*, therefore the concept of resurrection (unless you deliberately do something like rebuild the things) just does not apply.

HOWEVER, today while considering the new Operating System, Windows 7 and playing with the idea of thinking about installing it on this machine......if I could get it to boot or something, I plugged in this (I'm writing from the formerly *done in* Toshiba Satellite even now) laptop, fired it up and wowee......it worked! I've been using it all day and it's been working perfectly! No screen freezes, no crashes.....fine! And, I re-thought the idea of installing an operating system which is still in beta form, guaranteed to have "bugs" and glitches and which will completely stop operating on August 1. Reason kicked in and said this is just not a good idea. There are enough stressers in life without reaching out and purposely asking for some more.

But still, this machine continues to work! It is an enigma. Oh I'm not going to take back the new laptop.....uh uh....nope. That would most certainly set the re-demise of this machine in motion again. All those "my days are numbered....caution....caution" signals this was giving me for weeks were real. I don't expect this little honeymoon of sorts today to continue endlessly. Yet, isn't it strange?

Over time, I've had the opportunity to converse at length with various brilliant computer people (they could build them, program them, fix them.....all that) and not one of them really knew the inner actual *thing* that makes these incredible machines really work. It has made me, a totally self-taught computer user feel a little better at all the things I don't know about them myself. Mystifying, isn't it? How like us, in many ways. The Bible says we are "fearfullyly and wonderfully made" and isn't that the truth! That we could have the intelligence to invent these things in the first place, and then develop them over the years to the extraordinary extent they are now. From the early days of DOS where you had to type things in EXACTLY correctly or you'd get bupkis....nothing (and the computer wouldn't give you a hint what you did wrong or how to go on from there) to the "point and click" world of Windows. Amazing. I think back to the extraordinary concept of even having a computer that would sit on your desk without being the size of a trailer or something, as in the original computers which needed huge cooling resources. The breakthrough of the Personal Computer was amazing (trying not to "date" myself here...I was really young). But now, where it has gone from there, making that older technology so incredibly obsolete, just think about the "evolution" of the computer over the years.

Whoops! About that "e" word, evolution. I'm not hinting that I believe in Darwin's theory...I learned my life science of taxonomy to be Life: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species; and that living things evolve WITHIN their own species to survive, or they become extinct. I do not believe we humans were ever sharks or fish or any of that drivel (respectfully speaking for those who do believe this) because we haven't jumped a species. We have evolved and changed to survive within our environment. But that's about living, breathing life...not electronic stuff made of plastic, metal, wires and electricity and cannot evolve without a person making this happen to/for them (the computers).

So, here I am. I enjoyed going to www.fancast.com to watch the most recent episode of "Grey's Anatomy" in HD on this lovely screen, listening to the sound through the nice Harmon Kardon stereo speakers. Everything about this laptop has just been humming along beautifully all day. Go figure. It's an enigma. Who knows about tomorrow or whenever, though. I'm grateful to have the new Toshiba laptop sitting on the shelf. So very much like life. Just when you think you have something completely figured out, sometimes there's a surprise which had previously seemed not possible. But isn't it nice to be prepared? Even if that preparedness is just an illusion, too. Relax. We need to plan, prepare and keep ourselves pointed in the direction we've chosen for our lives. But remember: we're not in control of very much at all. Just breathe, do your best, and enjoy the ride :-)