Crash

Posted by Peter

at The Buddha Diaries

Oh, great.  I have just dropped my Prius off at Toyota for service and have stopped by at Denny's for a bite to eat, just assuming somehow I can get online by wireless magic, but the magic doesn't work.  Then the computer crashes.  I'm not kidding.  It's a MacBook, it shouldn't crash, right?  But it does.  I keep getting a screen that tells me that my "Spotlight" isn't working and should I report it or ignore it.  I try ignoring, but it keeps coming back.  And soon I can get anything to move at all.  A real crash.

I read my New York Times instead.  I go to pick up the Toyota.  I drive back home and try the laptop here.  No luck.  I get on the telephone to Apple Care.  Some forty-five minutes later, still no satisfaction.  They suggest re-installing Leopard, which I installed only a couple of weeks ago.  It will take, oh, a couple of hours...  I am fortunate to have my desktop to work on!

The gift?  I had started writing a piece about last night's election results for The Buddha Diaries earlier in the morning.  I was kind of pissed about it.  No, I was very pissed.  It came out in the form of something very like a whine.  I realized this in the time it took to get back to the entry that I had intended to post over breakfast.  Time to re-read it, make a discerning judgment, realize that it sounded, well, whiny... And time to think about how I might do some gentle rewrites to say what I wanted to without the indignation.  I think that what I eventually posted was much better for the pause.

The lesson: pause, take a breath and, if necessary, rewrite.  Thanks, laptop!