There's a uniquely betrayed feeling you get when you lose work because your computer has crashed. I'm in the middle of developing a flash tutorial animation for my client(yes, I do do real work) to explain to their customers how the moderately complex security system protecting their data works. I was working on some tricky buttons, trying to get the flash version of a web page to work the way the real web page does so I can simulate navigating the real site.

So the message that Flash had performed an illegal action and would now be shut down was, to put it mildly, unwelcome.

It's a familiar feeling, and this particular time I probably lost no more than an hour or at most two of work. Plus, since I remember what I did, I can probably recreate it much faster than I spent creating the work the first time. So instead of feeling rage and the overwhelming need to throw the monitor out the window (not the smartest idea for a whole long laundry list of reasons, not the least of which is that the monitor was simply the messenger and what I really need to do is throw the Flash development team out the window), I instead have the wounded spouse's self-condemning feeling that it was, in some way, my fault: I knew the program wasn't completely stable, I've had problems with it before, and yet, I went back to pretending that everything was ok. Plus, I didn't save my work frequently enough.

While my desktop is still in the process of trying to kill the loose threads in its memory and shut itself down (advising me gently but, it appears, futilely, that I should wait for its interminable cleanup process to track the rogue threads down and purge them in a safe way) I turn to the laptop, connect to Blogger, and type this note. And you know what? Blogger hasn't crashed yet, but the laptop--which has died three times already today, although since I had nothing unsaved any of those times has avoided my wrath--is equally, if not more fallible, and I'm just running from one abusive relationship to another here.

Not to draw this whole rather unsavory metaphor out too much, but it's interesting how readily the world as a whole has dumped the slow, boring, and safe mainframes, that never crash, and moved whole heartedly to the snazzy, sexy, dangerous PCs that keep coming back to hurt us.
posted by Tom at 6:43 PM | link |