Time Sponges

My, computers are time sponges. My main system started toying with me a few weeks ago doing all sorts of strange stuff acting like it was possessed by some evil code which pulls its heads in on the slightest sniff of a virus scan. First my cd rom began to play up, only writing to a disk if a written disk was previously inserted (what the?), then my secondary hard drive packed it it, my ethernet card decided to start hanging up my system, and then as if to taunt me where it would injure me the most, my audio drivers refused to load on start up intermittently.

Now I'm one for a good puzzle, and a bit of problem solving, otherwise every computer I've ever owned would meet it's timely end traveling through a pane of glass to a resting place outside my window, but alas I am overall a patient man with enough spare time, and a yearning for discovery.

I managed to solve all these issues, but lost track of how much time this has taken. As soon as I tackle another quirk, as soon as the (permanently unscrewed) side panel is removed from the computer case, time seems to accelerate beyond belief. Note that this acceleration is exponentially multiplied during the hours of 9pm and 6am often only to be pulled into reality by the appearance of daylight though the aforementioned window.

Apart from the trouble shooting and quirk eliminating, the amount time spent downloading current software and updates to keep the systems running smoothly ironically devours time which would rather be spent utilizing the very same applications, how much music making time has been spent installing drivers, updating recording software, gathering samples, setting up hardware devices etc. We all need the right tools to work with, though a line needs to be drawn where we say, 'lets work with what we got' otherwise end up spending three days sharpening the axe to chop down a tree.

Cheers.
Ecca.