Four-wheelers tearing up and down a grassy hill; Jobe sleeps, spinning color-wheel drives me to brink
Sunday, June 26, 2011 at 2:55PM 
I was pedaling my bicycle home last night about 10:00 PM when these young hell-raisers zipped past, raced up the hill ahead of me, shot back down again and then disappeared in a cloud of dust.
This is our own youngest, already-out-of-the-womb, young hell raiser, Jobe, gone down to sleep through the night.
I wonder...
if, in a very short while...
...he and his brother might themselves be on four-wheelers, tearing up the tax-payer planted grass of local roadside hillsides...
...?????
This is pretty much how I have spent the last several days - watching this damn color wheel seem to spin 'round and 'round forever and on to infinity as I have sat at my computer desperately and futilely trying to complete my project so that I can send it to press. I had anticipated having all the photos completely processed and converted to CMYK by today, then I would go to Barrow tomorrow, fill in the missing text blanks, get everything tweaked and proofed by the end of the week and be to press by early next week.
Instead, I have been watching this damn color ball spin - and when it spins my computer won't do anything else. I am not even close. And despite all efforts by Machous and myself to fix the problem, it will not be fixed. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. It just grows steadily and steadily worse. This computer is done for.
Last night, somewhere between midnight and 1:00 AM, I just gave up. There is no point of even trying to finish up on this computer any longer. I simply must replace this computer. Until I do, I am stuck, I can't accomplish anything.
So, as soon as I get my next check, hopefully tomorrow, money that I had planned to put to other uses will go into a new computer. I have no choice. I have to do it.
Maybe it will make things better for this blog, though.
Regular readers have undoubtedly noted the exasperation that I have felt now over the past weeks... months... with the amount of time this blog has been taking. They have noted me cutting back, and promising to cut back more.
I think this computer has been in decline for awhile, wasting a bit of time here, a bit of time there, time that I dismiss but that cumulatively adds up until finally it has reached the point of unbearability.
Take this post, for example. It is now 2:16 PM, Sunday. When I got up, I knew it was going to take awhile, so I opened Lightroom and then let it begin to import yesterday's take of 416 RAW images while I went off, cooked and ate breakfast and twice chased Jim into the woods when he thought he was finally about to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a mountain lion.
If this computer were up to par, that transfer of RAW images from card to harddrive with thumbnails on display in Lightroom would have taken somewhere between five and ten minutes.
After doing all that I have described, the task was barely half-way done.
When the computer is up to speed, I can edit and begin processing the early pictures that pop up on my screen even before the download is complete. Now, I do not dare, for things will just completely bog down and nothing will ever complete.
Finally, though, after a couple of hours, the pictures were thumbnailed and on display in Lightoom.
However, if tried to look at them all, each time I switched from one to another, I would get a spinning colorwheel that would last anywhere from two or three to ten to fifteen or 20 minutes.
So I did not look at my take. I went right to the fourwheeler shots, grabbed the one that appears here without looking at the others, then spent about half an hour struggling to get it through the RAW to jpeg conversion process and then did the same with the other two.
And then it took forever to load the three into Squarespace. Once here, I can type at a normal pace.
Still, it has taken me a bunch of hours to put up this three-picture post. For this blog, I do my pictures "quick and dirty." And it has taken me this long. For Uiñiq, I take my time, try to get it just right (although I never quite succeed as I would like). So you can see what an impossible task I have faced.
It is good thing that our house does not sit on the edge of the cliff. I am so exasperated at the moment that I might jump right off it.
Rumor has it that in July, Apple will release a new, improved, faster computer to replace the Mac Pro series of which I have one of the early releases. It will just fry my brain to no end to buy the current model and then the next week find that Apple has just released the new and improved, swifter version for about the same price. But I cannot wait. I need the computer NOW!
And even if it is not as good as what will be out in a week or two for the same price, it will still be the fastest and best computer that I have ever used. So I can't wait. I must buy now.
Just as soon as I get my next check. Hopefully, tomorrow.
Today is Caleb's birthday - 35 years old. The whole family is coming out to celebrate. Except he won't be here. He just took off to hang with his buddies. He did not tell us he had plans but he did. We did not tell him we were going to celebrate, but just took it for granted that he would know.
Oh well. I think it is good for him to build up his social life.
Reader Comments (2)
how come all the good guys like me and you haven't got any money? time for your readers to hit the pay pal button!
Ruth, I got a check late yesterday, so it is okay now.