Friday, October 19, 2007

Necessary maintenance

A month has gone by quickly without postings from me. Nothing interesting to report on except lots of ‘maintenance’, or I should say ‘ordinary upkeep’ at all levels.

In any case, my days were full amidst some routine medical checkups, furniture reupholstering, a couple of lectures, and some very attention-grabbing Italian tv programs (have subscribed to 24/7 RAI TV, an issue that deserves a separate posting by itself).

Most of my labor during the past 2 weeks, however, went into reconstructing my computing facilities, with some reorganization and archiving of my huge data bases. I’ve had a similar experience a few years ago because of hardware failure, but this time it was due to my need of restructuring and streamlining what I had at my disposal into a single, more efficient, capable desktop system that allows me better software and online conveniences.

This whole exercise remains a challenge; it requires attention and appropriate choices at every step, and knowledge of how to navigate in the solution of the myriad of little stumbling blocks that are par for the course in this work. I’ve reorganized, relocated, documented all hardware with all its cables and plugs, and have nicely fitted also external additions into the equipment cabinetry that I had purposely constructed two years ago. The results are quite satisfying.

Still have to do lots of work with my data, but the operating system (have decided not to go with the new Vista for a while) and the updated applications, coupled with a larger monitor are a pleasure to work and have fun with. Hurrah! Onward now with what else needs to be followed up on.

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