After one minor deconstruction, three total disassemblies, one hard drive reformat, one almost nervous breakdown, and two attempts at installing the OS and drivers from scratch…THIS BATTLE STATION IS FULLY OPERATIONAL….again.Technology is wonderful. I won’t deny that it has improved my quality of life, but man, building equipment that requires disassembly to a mound of screws, silicon, aluminum, copper, and solder in order to maintain proper function is poor design.
Right now, with my technical qualifications, my time is only worth around $15 or $20 an hour, so there remains economical sense in repairing my possessions tout seul. But someday, my time will be worth more. I figure I spent around 20 hours to get everything working; that’s $300. For the work I had to do, I would be hard pressed to pay a professional less to do the same work. But how about six years from now when I’m worth several times what I get now? For $750, I could buy half a new computer. That stage is what my father calls, “a battle of man vs machine.”
Why battle? Money? There is no economic sense in spending a day on an item that a pro could fix in half the time for half the money.
Conclusion: people who fix stuff for practical reasons are delusional. Or at least, I am.
Dad, the BIGGEST Curmudgeon of all, as MSU calls him, has one card with which justify this character contradiction--the glory of the battlefield. Granted such glory is not loved by all. Some would rather go to the game than play; some would rather sit back and calculate than build. I am the former, so when it comes to inanimate objects, there are few satisfactions greater than transforming a $1000 dollar paper weight back into something a person cares about.
Twentieth Century Digital Boy - Bad Religion
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