Relative value
Have you ever wished that you could just fix a problem for someone? I’m not talking about world hunger, or slavery or anything else that absorbs the various committees in think tanks. Rather, the sort of problem caused by relative value. Or, when something cost too much to allow the abandon.
I spent the last couple of evenings trying to “fix” a computer for a family friend. The usual complaints; things are slow and sometimes they don’t work. The kind of challenge that techs take on because it seems like a gesture of good will. And then you see how deep the pit really is.
The machine arrived, with a decade-old operating system, very little RAM and a hard drive that was like an old dog. Probably loved/lived to hunt earlier in life, but now just wanted to sleep. No real problem when your scrap parts box is deep. Some more RAM, a network card, software patches and upgrades. Cinderella, ready for the ball.
Except that Cinderella tends to stumble, fall and recover about every nine minutes (a rough calculation). Beep, reboot and pretend that nothing had happened. Just shake it off, kid. A motherboard with a fatal flaw.
When the optimistic owner stopped by this evening, my language was polite. Maybe a newer machine (bought at the surplus place if cost is an issue). The years have brought newer technology into our lives, and the older stuff deserves retirement. You can see this one coming a mile away…
The machine originally cost over a thousand dollars. No way can the budget afford to discard such an investment. Maybe a year from now. All I could do was remain polite, reiterate that this machine might not be ready for daily toil (as it beeps and reboots every few minutes). And, afterwards, sigh and wish my scrapbox had deeper pockets, because every home deserves a good computer. Let’s not even think about the “almost free Internet solution” that involves a telephone line and a series of beeps that used to seem so modern.
