Archive for category Productivity toolkit

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Over the last two weeks I’ve been heavily involved in home maintenance on some of our home computers. This has included replacing hard drives, re-installing multiple operating systems and reconfiguring wireless networks. The exercise highlighted to me the importance of dealing with breakdowns. Now, I’m sure for most people the word breakdown has a negative connotatoin and is associated with mechanical or mental breakdown. I use it here to mean something different and as shorthand for ‘breakdown in the transparency of life’.

You and I walk through life oblivious to many of the things that happen around us. We don’t see them and it’s in that sense that I use transparency to describe elements of life. When the transparency ‘breaks down’ something which was previously invisible becomes visible and we may even wonder how we’d never noticed it before. The rest of the article will describe these terms with some examples and by doing so I hope to help you understand that breakdowns will occur, do occur and how we habitually handle them has a marked effect on our quality of life.

When things aren’t working as they seem

The process of installing an operating system on a computer — in this case Windows XP on a computer that had been given to us as a replacement for my daughters’ monolith — is reasonably simple. I begin by wiping the hard drive, installing Windows XP, installing drivers for hardware and applying Windows updates. Then I backup the computer and can begin installing software.

Breakdown #1 — Where are the drivers?

A computer’s operating system doesn’t necessarily know about all the hardware in your computer. This is both by design to allow upgrades and a side-effect of the many pieces of hardware provided by many vendors in the marketplace. As this was an inherited computer my first breakdown in transparency was realising I didn’t have the correct video and hard disk drivers for the machine. I realised this after I had wiped everything off and begun installing the operating system. Computers typically arrive with a drivers disk which I didn’t have. No need to panic. I jumped onto another computer in the house and downloaded them. If I’d paniced I would have called the person who gave us the PC (who likely would have been unable to find the CD anyway) or in the worst case paid expensive IT support or simply given up and purchased a new computer. My point is, this stuff happens and it’s important how we deal with it. The three non-alternatives were actually escalation alternatives should the first have failed.

Breakdown #2 — How old is my waypoint?

Many computer games use the concept of a waypoint to save progress. In a typical 8–10 hour game it is not practical to play the whole game through and so waypoints are used. When rebuilding a computer I create my own waypoints by imaging the hard drive. These disk images are exact copies of what I have installed and if I need to go backwards, quicker to reload to the hard drive than starting from scratch. I had spent a couple of hours downloading Windows Service Pack 3, Internet Explorer 8 and other updates when one of them caused the computer to lock up. After 20 minutes of inactivity I turned the computer off and rebooted. It so happened the lock up occured in the midde of applying a patch to the Windows Genuine Advantage Software and the consequence was a legal copy of Windows was not being recognised as such. I couldn’t get past the problem and so had to revert to an earlier waypoint.

The breakdown? My waypoint was two hours of work and several hundred MB of downloads ago. I had pushed forward rather than saving where I was and it cost me. Have you ever thought to yourself, “I need to save this file before proceeding”, failed to do so and have your computer crash minutes later. I bet you have and I normally save whenever I have that thought. Let’s say my subsconscious is warning me (nb: just save a second draft of this post…). Anyway, in my eagerness to get the PC configured I hadn’t take the 20 minutes to save a copy and it cost me four hours. With all breakdowns the most powerful place of action is from accepetance they have occurred. Sometimes our only choice is to accept them and move on. I had to go back to two hours earlier and start again.

Breakdown #3 — Where is the operating system?

One would hope I had learnt from my earlier experience with waypoints and I had. I imaged the disk prior to installing the update that previously crashed and again afterwards. To do this I use Acronis True Image software. In the past I’ve used Ghost and you may have heard the term ‘ghosting a drive’. True Image allows you to partition off part of your hard drive for secure images. After I installed the patches etc., I imaged the drive to an external USB drive and to the secure Acronis partition on the computer’s main drive.

Next morning, I had a small configuration task to perform which only required a moment to boot up the computer, login to Windows and change a setting. I couldn’t do it. Each time I tried the computer failed to complete my login. “Great!”, I thought (with a large dollop of sarcasm for so early in the morning) I’ll have to go to the backups. I couldn’t. The secure image would not load. I tried again without success. Lastly I tried the external drive image. That I could access but when I tried to restore it nothing happened.

There are only two types of people. Those who have experienced a catastrophic hard drive failure and those who will.

The previous night’s lockup and the morning’s problem were the same. A dodgy hard drive. I didn’t know it at the time, but my external hard drive image was a saving grace. The state of the hard drive was transparent to me. I didn’t know it was failing although a conversation with the previous owner confirmed the strange lockups which occurred without reason. Once the drive had failed twice the transparency broke down and I could see it was the problem. That night I swapped the hard drive, restored the image and was done. The backup to the internal drive (that which failed) was because I was trying a new feature of the True Image software and not part of a plan. However, that I had a backup at all is from the experience of past breakdowns and points to them as opportunities for learning.

The second computer

Often, with a struggling computer, the solution is a reinstallation of the operating system. This was the case with my laptop. During the rebuild I tried Windows 7 and have to say I like it but in my case, on my laptop, there is an unfortunate habit of powering off without warning so I’ve dumped it. It was only when I reinstalled XP that the next breakdown of note occurred.

Acrobat Professional — Where art thou?

I think Acrobat Professional is one of the most useful pieces of software on the planet. So to many others which is why Adobe charges a lot for it, software pirates pirate it, and Adobe seeks to protect their investment. I so happen to have a legitimate copy of Acrobat Professional 8 and that’s where I’ve come unstuck.

To protect against illegal installations of Acrobat you must activate the software. This sends a copy of your serial number to Adobe who keep track of the total number of installations. To their credit, Adobe allow you to have Acrobat installed twice. Try a third time and you will not be able to activate and use the software.

Here’s my breakdown. I didn’t know there was a limit of two activations in place. I had assumed it was tied to the CPU/hardware configuration as other software that uses such activation systems often is. Remember I am reinstalling my operating system.

• Old, tired and sluggish, installation = 1 activation
• Windows 7, tried = 1 activation
• New install = 1 activation too many

The software is useful in that it suggests deactivating a previous copy. I can’t. Windows 7 is gone with several hours backing up the new system, restoring the old and trying to deactivate it fails. Apparently my firewall is blocking things which is interesting as I tried it without a firewall installed. Adobe support is very slow, phones don’t get answered and online chat doesn’t work.

Can I rant and rave in response? For sure I can and the few lines above I’ll write off as a warning to others but ultimately such action doesn’t help. I have no choice but to wait for their response which has been slow to date.

Breakdowns occur. Something is wrong if they don’t.

On any given day we will be accosted by breakdowns. Anything that interrupts the flow of life as you expected it would be is a breakdown. This includes green lights changing to red. Some will have significant impact on our lives and when that happens the habits we’ve developed in dealing with the day-to-day breakdowns of life will assist. This article was written to help you identify that breakdowns exist. Hopefully I’ve created a breakdown within you.