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STRATEGY FOR THE DAY: be brave

I spent yesterday and today doing scary things with my computer. I installed OS X last June and have been experiencing glitchy things ever since. To be honest I was pretty impatient when I installed it and didn't really read the instructions all that carefully. I just sort of barrelled ahead and did it to see what would happen. Things were mostly working but I wasn't able to use my printer in certain situations and couldn't optimize my hard disk which became severely fragmented over time. Because music programs like Digital Performer need large, contiguous amounts of disk space, I was starting to run into trouble with some of my music files. I finally decided I'd better go back and do it right which meant, arrrrrgh, backing up my entire hard disk, erasing it (!), dividing it into discreet partitions, then re-installing everything. I was very nervous, to say the least. But it felt like the time was right (my disk looked like confetti when I examined it with Norton's Disk Tools) and I'm about to get a DSL High Speed line (I must be the LAST person in California with a 56 K modem!) and figured I should get the disk optimized before I start downloading mp3 files and app updates.

So yesterday I began backing up every single thing on my disk, applications, files, system folders, everything! Then I hit the erase button. (Make it so, Number One!) Then I ran the partition program and started re-installing everything. It took me a couple of tries but I'm happy to say everything is back up and working. (Hey, I'm here, aren't I?) I'm all neat and tidy and, now that my music files will have a space all their own, I can defrag them with ease. Phew!!! Life is good. I can reward myself with a doggie treat now.

Other than that... Bridget St. John wrote to tell me she will be touring in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston in February. I'll post the info on my web site and here in my diary. I'd love to hear her perform live. It's been way too long!

Copyright 2004 Robin Frederick. All rights reserved.