Why is it that Windows always decides to crash and burn when there’s a deadline yapping at my heels? I swear it seems malicious. I was up all night Saturday night first attempting to get enough material to fill the issue and then trying to get a pre-final draft of this AJ sent through e-mail to the Publisher for his final layout/graphics work. Even compressed, the newsletter was too big to go as an attachment, so I had to remove the larger graphics for replacement just before printing the masters. I finally got it down to just under two MB, and got it sent around six this morning.

Fooling with the graphics and the preliminary layout was certainly time-consuming, but what was more worrisome was the noticeable slowdown in The Brute’s response. Sluggish is about the nicest thing I could call it. But I did finally get the thing made and sent, and staggered off to bed for four hours of sleep...more than I’d had in a night since last weekend. The nightmare began after I woke up, though.

When I turned on the system this morning, Windows refused to load properly. The system would freeze partway through, and it seemed to be getting worse the more I tried, so after exhausting all other options I could think of, I finally — very reluctantly — decided to reinstall Win95, again. That was at half-past one or so. Now, after another exasperating session of trying to make this so-called operating system live up to its name, I have gotten it to the point where the system is barely usable. No sound, nothing better than standard VGA graphics (yes, VGA), crippled SCSI (good thing I don’t need the scanner or those two SCSI drives tonight), and a modem that runs at no more than half its rated speed. And getting it this far took the better part of eight hours.

I now have enough rage pent up to last me well through Golden Week, at the very least. Since I don’t want to risk any more crashes until I have the newsletter masters printed out, further frustrating effort to get hardware installed will have to wait until next weekend, or the one after. That should raise my ire level enough to keep me simmering well through the end of summer. Not being an excessively blood-thirsty fellow, let me take this opportunity to give everyone out there a friendly warning: don’t mention Windows to me if you should meet me in person anytime soon, and whatever you do, don’t introduce your friend the Microsoft employee to me. I refuse to be responsible for the consequences.

About the only good thing that’s come out of this otherwise wasted Sunday is that I predict I will have plenty of material for this column for several issues to come, as I go through the sickeningly familiar — but never quite the same as last time, more’s the pity — struggle to try to make the operating system actually operate, again. On a happier note, I and the newsletter staff would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and to express our hope that the new year is better than ever for you and yours. May you experience joyful holidays and an exciting, healthy, and prosperous 1999, and may as many of your wishes as possible come true. I hope you all have better luck with your computers than I have been having, too. See you next year.

© Algorithmica Japonica Copyright Notice: Copyright of material rests with the individual author. Articles may be reprinted by other user groups if the author and original publication are credited. Any other reproduction or use of material herein is prohibited without prior written permission from TPC. The mention of names of products without indication of Trademark or Registered Trademark status in no way implies that these products are not so protected by law.