The Setup
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You know what I’ve learned? A person only flails around in regards to their rig when they don’t have a clear idea of what constitutes their work. Suitability and fit is paramount, and one is never going to find what they’re looking for if they don’t know what they need. So, I looked at my work, I watched how I used my computer for a day, and found out all I do is draw vector shapes, surf the web, listen to music, and bash words out in plain text. That’s hardly the type of activity that requires computational brute force, though I understand there are some of you out there that require just that. Not me though. Nope.
And these computers? As much as I love fiddle-faddling with the damn things, I mostly just want to forget I have one and get on with saying stuff and making things. I realized that I valued freedom more than power, flexibility more than blazing speed. I want the choice of being able to be mobile, and to carry around my whole setup with me at all times without much inconvenience.
This might just be total rubbish and I’m projecting things onto this machine, but I think I love it because I can’tfiddle-faddle with it. It’s un-fiddle-faddle-able. One more time: fiddle-faddle.
I keep returning to this post, both literally (I think I’ve read it three times) and figuratively. There are some super-practical things in here—like the backup play-by-play that got me to finally commit to an offsite backup—but there’s something bigger going on.
At my work, we just came out of a hellish week of technical problems. I had trouble getting locked out of client email, had some update issues, and then [DUNDUNDUN] our email servers went down for two days. Without any backup or recovery in place, this meant archiving, deleting, and rebuilding folder structures, rules, and settings in Outlook. For the second time in three months.
It’s not that big a thing, really - it only takes a few hours, and some general organization usually gets better in the process. So I started the week ready to go, get back to work, be productive…and my computer demanded I restart 4 times in one morning. The internet cut out regularly. While editing web content, I repeatedly got kicked off or logged out of the CMS without warning.
And this is what’s pernicious about unreliable IT — or about overly informative operating systems. They require—BY DESIGN—that you fiddle-faddle. A backup system that requires manually running? Fiddle. A forced-reset email password? Faddle. Email lost? Fiddle-faddle headdesk ouch. Security warning? Fiddle. Are you sure you want to access this page? Faddle. Pretty soon you’re practically afraid to commit to large chunks of real work because you know you’re going to be interrupted. Excuse me, your computer will say, quick question: do you mind if I run to the bathroom for a sec? And of course you don’t (only assholes don’t let people go to the bathroom when they need to), but there goes that project for a few minutes. And when it gets back it’s all, oh hey I totally didn’t mean to but I dropped your thing in the urinal and it got a little pee on it.
What I’m saying is that I want a computer with a bigger bladder, because I am damned tired of handing out hall passes and pausing class just cause this asshole has to pee. In fact, while we’re at it, could I get a computer that acts like a computer instead of a first-grader?
