Saturday 7 March 2015

I Killed my computer

That's odd, you might say, as you clearly haven't or you wouldn't have posted this.

    About one o'clock this afternoon my XP machine suffered a terminal seizure and packed up. Not with a roar but a timid little phut, and it's taken me nearly seven hours to fix it. And even after I'd done that, it's been a real pig to find a copy of Service pack 3 without half a ton of toolbars and annoy-you-to-death ware. I'm currently downloading about ten petabyte of all the XP stuff I had before but now have to get all over again. I would happily have throttled the thing myself but I'll be buggered if I'm buying Windows 8 or 8.1 or whatever other mutant variants they bring out in the interim. If I can just keeping the old crone hobbling on until Windows 10 then I'll be content. 

   On the plus side I did manage to get some more writing done on my 486 clockwork machine whilst I was waiting, so here is the hopefully last - first page of Kongomato 3 - Progeny of Kongomato. I often find the first page as difficult to write as the rest of the book.

Next day. And it's still downloading - stuff. Given that there's only (theoretically) an Epic byte of storage in the entire world (10 48th bytes) I hope it stops soon. I've only got a paltry half terabyte disc and I've taken up almost half of that already - just with windows and my legal copy of Word. I wonder what else is flowing into my machine.



The famous gothic tower canted at an impossible angle. Accidental assaults by remotely controlled drones aided by the acidic droppings of giant flying lizards were placing unsustainable strain on the foundations. Soon Big Ben, the enormous bell within would toll one last time as the British landmark plummeted to the ground destroying the equally neglected Houses of Parliament below.
    This would cause no undue concern. In fact it would provoke no reaction of any kind since all civilised life in London was long departed. Now all that lived beneath the tower were the lowest form of insects, feverishly hiding from the dominant form of life: enormous winged beasts prowling the sky with ceaseless energy and unquenchable hunger. Yet the eyes gazing jealously to the east were not interested in this incredible sight, nor did they spare a glance for the London Eye, a giant Ferris wheel cleverly constructed from taught steel fingers, woven tightly enough for the whole structure to stand as if by magic and once thrilling vast numbers of tourists. Nor did they notice the rotting carcass of one such creature welded and spliced between the woven steel bands in the darkened city deprived of all electricity.
    Perhaps the same creature had dealt the famous tower its mortal blow. If it had nobody would know, or care.
   These eyes feasted on a far more interesting and potentially lucrative prize. Fastened greedily upon the one place the rampaging creatures not invade.

12 comments:

  1. Roger this is sounding so good I can’t wait for more!!
    Oh yes, sorry about the PC I almost forgot all about that in my excitement.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've been building and fixing computer since my first in 82. It was called an Oric and none of them worked. I hated them then and I still hate them. The only reason I persist is because my daughter's always breaking hers and I have to fix it.
    I've actually re-rewriten the first page again, but hopefully for the better. My monsters have mutated again. Having so much fun.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great excerpt! And yes, wait for 10. 8 sucks!

    ReplyDelete
  5. 8.1 is only marginally less irritating, so bad in fact that I considered (briefly) going over to the dark side - mac or linux.
    I'm alright now, though.
    I've changed the page again. So much for settling.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great excerpt!

    I'm happy with windows 7 - I've added a shell to it so I have the old start menu ;)

    ReplyDelete
  7. I've heard of Classic Shell. If I have to buy Win 8.1 I'm going to use it, too.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I agree with you about Win 8. Our computer crashed and had to be replaced. Win 8 takes some getting used to. Why do they have to keep changing things that were fine the way they were???

    ReplyDelete
  9. I believe they were trying to claw back some of the android market and as always with M/soft, made a bad job of it but were determined to get back some of the money they'd spent, hence Vista, and before that Win 2000, and Win 98. I'll stick with it, though because I truly hate Apple.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Excellent! Love this excerpt. Aw, 8.1 isn't too bad once you get used to it - whenever that day comes. I know I still haven't.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'm not having it. I'm just not and you can't make me. I'll wait for 10. But as usual you'll get a long time before us.

    ReplyDelete
  12. It’s too bad that you had to go through this unfortunate situation. But at least it led you to an upgrade, which I think is pretty neat. Did you get the latest Windows version yet? Whichever the case, I hope you don’t encounter any more problems with your computer. Have a great day!


    Cordia Remsen @ RB’s Computer Service

    ReplyDelete

Labels