Rant #3,002: Electric Stories

Good morning.
 
It is October 27, and the living is easy (I wish).
 
This is already the 300th day of the interminable year of 2022, and are you looking forward to this year ending as much as I am?
 
It has been a rough year, but somehow, my computer keeps on ticking.
 
You might remember that a few months ago, I reported that my iMac computer was on its last legs.
 
It would not boot up in the morning without constant retries—like six or seven at a time—and it was frustrating as all heck watching this thing try to get itself ready in the morning.
 
I really thought it was a goner during the summer, but somehow it has survived, and it has actually, somehow, improved its performance.
 
Out of every 10-day span, it actually starts up like it should on about seven of those days, and on the other three days, it usually takes one restart to get it going … much like it did today.
 
I cannot put my finger on  exactly why it is performing this way, but I do have my theory.
 
I think that this computer simply doesn’t perform well in the very hot weather, and as the weather has become cooler, it is more apt to working correctly than when the weather outside is 90 degrees or above.
 
I am thinking about getting one of those portable air coolers in the coming months, and using it overnight during the summer to cool the room that the computer is in, which would also cool down the computer and everything else in the room.
 
It would be a more cost-effective way to keep things going smoothly than sending the computer out for repair or dumping it entirely.
 
Funny, I had this same problem last summer, but after that season ended, the c0mputer basically went back to normal.
 
This summer, it happened again, and it still gives me some problems here and there, so yes, I realize that there will come a time when this computer will not be able to boot itself up at all, and I will have to get a replacement.
 
I do have another desktop computer—my old computer from work—but while it boots up without problem, it is also long in years and probably wouldn’t last very long as my main computer if I needed it to be just that, but it is an option for the future.
 
But right now, I cannot purchase another computer, so I try to baby this thing as much as I possibly can, and so far, everything is pretty much A-OK.
 
And yes, I back up everything, so all my files—my work files, my digitized music files, my other pertinent files—are all backed up on either thumb drives and/or a main exterior drive.
 
And yes, I have all my Rants backed up on my two computers—the rough drafts of what you eventually see—and, of course, those Rants find their way onto my blog site and onto Facebook, so I have plenty or resources to get what I wrote at the blog.
 
Computers have become like cars, at least for me.
 
I drive them and I drive them hard, and I drive them into the ground, but I don’t get rid of them until they simply do not work anymore, and I am forced to replace them.
 
That is just the way I am with these things.
 
This computer has got to be 13 or 14 years old, and my car is currently eight years old.
 
Sure, both don’t have the bells and whistles that are commonplace in newer models, but they both do exactly what I want them to do, so why get rid of them before their time is really due?
 
Believe me, if I had the money, I would have gotten the newest iMac on the market, but I really cannot afford that amount of money right now.
 
Perhaps in the future I will have to do that ... maybe on a payment plan or something like that.
 
But for now, my iMac remains as is, and as the computer improved its performance when the weather got cooler, I felt that it saved me all that money, at least for right now.
 
And the last thing that I want to do is upset the apple cart here any further than it has already been upset during this wonderful year.
 
I just hope that by writing this blog entry, I didn’t give my computer the whammy, meaning that it doesn’t start up at all tomorrow.
 
I know my iMac is almost on intravenous right now, but as long as I can get it going, I am going to say that the patient is doing just fine.