Technology...a fickle mistress

Everyone nowadays is surrounded by technology, be it in any form. It has formed an integral role in our modern lives. Love it or hate it, you just can’t deny it that you are in someway, knowingly or unknowingly stuck in this web of technology. Be it the hardware part or the software, we all have one such gadget in either realm that we just can’t live without. It can be a smartphone for some, tablet for others, gaming console for gamers, and even for those not so techie housewives, we have the modest food processors, electric chimneys and the helpful water purifier as well.




So you see my point, everyone is inclined to something technical, and its not their fault. Its all normal, as it is the information age. As you know about me, I’m a software engineer, so it’s a given fact that I spend most of the time with my laptop just doing things that I do. From checking mails to updating my status and doing some productive work in programming, I rely a lot on my laptop. But the last week wasn’t so well for me and my laptop.

I had a Windows 7 operating system in my machine, and Indian as we all are, it was a pirated version

So after a while of decent usage, Microsoft realized my tricks and started displaying warning messages on my logon screen “Windows is Not Genuine”.

It didn’t bother me at first but then it started to put bottlenecks on my laptop’s performance, which is a big no-no for me. So I decided to clean format my laptop, install Ubuntu and Windows XP (the best OS of windows if you ask me) and go back to the power computing days I enjoyed in my prime. As I was preparing my laptop for the operation, my younger brother told me that his desktop has become a home to many deadly viruses and they are now rendering the system unusable. So I thought “Yaar ek system format ho hi raha hai, chalo dusra bhi kardete hain!” (I’m already formatting one system, so let’s make it two).

For the techies, here’s the details of my hard disks
My laptop has a 320 GB Fujitsu Hard disk, I planned to format it and use it as an external drive for backup and intermediate data between the laptop & the desktop.
My desktop has a 320 GB Hitachi Hard disk, to be formatted and loaded with Win7 for my brother
My external hard disk was a 250 GB WD..which I planned on loading with Ubuntu & Win XP and use as my laptop’s hdd.




Firstly, I got down to back up all the data from my laptop, preparing the external drive for use. With all being set, I planned to install the OS using a bootable pen drive, as the DVD drive on my laptop is busted for quite a while and frankly I don’t feel like shelling out 3000 bucks for a replacement, I’m fine with it.
So I install Ubuntu to get rid of the Windows 7 boot records, as Microsoft’s new trick out of the bag doesn’t allow Windows XP to be installed on top of Windows 7 and/or Vista, which if you ask me is a cheap way of forcing their products onto us. So I installed Linux, which went well, then I proceeded to install Windows XP, which also went very well, but for some reason, my laptop didn’t boot the Windows XP well, it just kept going on restart mode. It took me 36 hours to try every hook and crook to make my laptop deal with the new Operating systems, even swapped the hard disks and scrapped my idea of using the smaller disk as my laptop’s internal one, but as it is in relationships, if its meant to be, it’ll be, otherwise, get lost.
So I decided to give my laptop a little break, and started operating on my desktop for a while. It was a breeze, windows install perfectly, ran perfectly. I even got a valid anti virus and scanned all the hard drives just to find 35 different strains of viruses, just happily lying their and corrupting my data. They had to be killed, and I killed them. Now, having the desktop set, I returned to my doom of despair, my laptop.
Now it seemed that windows XP was not an option, I asked my dad to get me a Windows 7 disc from his office, as I cam to know from my brother that he has some swanky gizmos in his office, so I thought to milk the opportunity. And as always, dad didn’t let me down. Not only he brought me a Windows 7 disc, he got an original licensed version! Yay Dad!

Then there was nothing to wait for! I installed the OS, installed my files and got my workstation set up.
But something was fishy. How can everything all of a sudden be so good? There had to be something, I’m obviously missing something.
I got the answer to this today. My external hard drive, the 250 GB WD, filled with my libraries of awesome movies & music, just crashed. It was just sitting their, spinning its platters, saving and writing data, and poof! It just crashed.
Now here I am, sitting in front of my almost brand new laptop, with a working desktop by my side and a clumsy dead hard drive, which will be later processed by a hardware technician to decide its fat, to be used as a hard disk or as a paper weight.



The past week was really intense, I mean, getting petty shocks from the system motherboard, all the wires, cables, chips, screws, CDs..it was all too hysterical. It all made clear to me that technology, though a worthy companion and a trustworthy fellow, can also be a very fiendish personality. It can surprise you in the multitudinous range of emotions that you can have, and thus, I may daresay, that it is a fickle mistress.