This blog is more and more becoming the ramblings of a guy crossing the threshold into old age. That guy is me, unfortunately. I’ve already gotten some junk mail from the good old AARP. Those address databases are darn good, had my 50th birthday pegged.

Well, I haven’t joined the AARP yet. I’ve got bigger problems to deal with right now. One of them is my home computer. Actually I shouldn’t complain; the thing has been pretty good. It’s a Dell Dimension P3 tower from the class of 2000. Windows 98 SE has been good to me. SE might have had a second meaning, i.e. “Stable Edition”.

Nonetheless, I had a growing hardware problem. My burner and the Adaptec Easy CD application seemed to be losing it. My CD “coaster” supply was starting to get out of control. Thus, it was finally time to act. I did some research, took a deep breath, and decided it was time to replace the burner. No turning back.

So last night I went over to the local CompUSA to get a Sony 52X CDRW (sorry, I don’t think the Dimension could do DVDs). And it was the usual store crap, the box is behind a locked glass cabinet so you’ve got to go searching for the sales staff. You finally find some unimpressive guy, and he tells you that he doesn’t have the keys, you’ve got to find the manager; “I think he’s over there by the monitors”. Well, you find the manager and of course he’s busy with someone else. So you wait, wait, wait, while he takes his sweet time. Finally you ask him if you can buy a burner, and he reluctantly agrees, like he’s doing you some major favor. I mean, if these stores need to keep stuff locked away, why can’t they just have a desk where you go to get the high-price stuff. Guess that would be too easy.

Anyway, I wake up this morning and realize that the day of reckoning has come. I finally have to take the cover off my computer. Actually, I did that once at work, trying to attach an SCSI scanner drive to an obnoxious Compaq that gave me nothing but trouble (but hey, it was the company’s, not mine). The drive didn’t take and the tech support guys had to come in. They later told me that they couldn’t get it to work either. So I didn’t kill anything, but I didn’t get anything done that time either.

Well, I looked over the instructions after breakfast and realized that they weren’t written for “starting-to-get-old” people who perhaps haven’t done stuff like changing hardware components before. I was on my own. I started unplugging cables and fiddling with a pull-back tab on the top, finally getting the cover off without anything snapping or flying off into the void. When that happens, you get a sickening feeling in the stomach and a strong sense that things aren’t ever going to be the same, i.e., it’s gonna cost you to have someone fix what you just broke. Anyway, there it all was, the burner, the floppy drive, the power supply, the motherboard, the hard drive, lots of wires … and lots of dust! (Remember man that you are dust, and to dust you shall return … ) Darn, this thing really needed a spring cleaning, even though it’s autumn. There were cobwebs down near the bottom; I saw a spider running along over the motherboard!

Then came the main event. The surgery was about to begin. I started shaking a bit and had to take a few deep breaths. Told myself, don’t rush anything and don’t force anything, as my Dad used to tell me as a kid (when I used to force everything I touched, with predictable results). So I used a light touch to jiggle the connectors around and nothing seemed to happen. But finally some things did happen. The old box came out and the new box went in. Connectors were plugged back in, the cover went back on, and cables were reconnected. Now came the real moment of truth. Time to boot up and face the consequences of plug and pray.

Will miracles never cease…. The system recognized the component. I put a data CD in, and lo and behold, Windows Explorer let me open a file on it. Next, an audio disk. I’ll be darned, I still have music! And now, time to put in the burning software. I wish it was Roxio or Nero, but Sony gives you B’s Recorder, whatever the heck that is. Well, I guess it ain’t that bad. It seems to work, although not without some typical modern software sleaziness. First, the drag and drop program only works with CDRW’s, whereby the good old Roxio-Adaptec Direct CD let you do it with regular CD-R’s. Growl. Second, “B” has a CD ripper that lets you save to MP3 … sounds like a nice bonus, except when you find out that you can only do it for 20 songs, then you’ve gotta pay to get the upgrade. Yea, right, well maybe I’ll just rip to WAV and use my CoolEdit 2000 to convert to MP3 (darn that was a good, reasonably priced application … curses on Adobe for killing it).

So, it looks like I got thru an adventure in PC-land in one piece (so far, anyway …). The new burner is supposedly 52X, but they really don’t think you should go over 40X. And actually, the new software seems to go thru more steps than the old Adaptec, so the process of burning may actually now be slower! But if it stops all the coaster production and gives me nice CD burns that I can still use in five years (should I live that long), it will have been worth it.

Speaking about being older but wiser, I’ve also decided to start using decent CDs. I once lost about 40 hours of work once on a Memorex CD that went bad, and saw some other ones corrupt on me at the wrong time. I just got a spindle of TDKs rated for 52X, figuring that if I run them at 40X it will more likely give me an accurate, stable burn. No more buying the cheap stuff (which was maybe why my old burner went south). Well, actually, maybe I’ll still use the cheap stuff for transfer purposes, e.g. when you want to give someone some a few pix or files on a disk and you don’t expect to get it back. But as to archiving stuff (so as to keep your hard drive from clogging up), stick to the good CDs.

Hey, when you get my age, you realize that you aren’t going to be remembered very long after you’re gone. So it’s important to put your thoughts and creations on good CDs, as form of digital legacy. At least then you can live and die with the hope that something that you did will be of interest to someone in the future, and will be available on a readable disk. Perhaps Verbatim will soon advertise its CDs in the AARP magazine, calling them “Data After-Life Plus”.