How many times do I have to be taught that technology, while useful, even delightful at times, is not to be depended on? I wonder if electronic equipment works better in Switzerland, where trains and trams are so dependable that a three-minute deviation from schedule is a notable occurrence?
Once again, I picked up my PDA to find it had lost everything. This is the third time that has happened in about a year an a half, and I think it's related to alarms going off repeatedly when I'm not aware of them. I'd love to shut off the alarms on the handheld device, but I can't do that without removing them from the desktop, which is where I really need them. But this time surprised me, because last I knew there was still plenty of life in the batteries.
Oh, well—I had a backup and only lost a couple of pieces of data. It would be helpful if I knew which data I'd lost, but I'll manage. At least this time I was home and could restore the data quickly—the first time I was on vacation and could do nothing till my return. That's when I learned to keep key information on paper when I travel!
Our nifty electronic devices are still too useful for me to give them up altogether, but it's good to be reminded now and then of the importance of backups and of Plans B. Of more concern is our similar dependence on fallible sources of heat, light, water, food, transportation, and other basic necessities, but that's another issue and much harder to resolve.Our PDA decided to completely die on us. First, we left it without batteries for too long, then Jon got a shaky restore from the extra memory card and we thought we were good. Then, on our way to Canada, he said, what's the best way to.... And the little machine refused to turn on. Jon thought it was the batteries, but we had just put new in. We bought some at a convenience store, but still it wouldn't turn on. Guess what? We made it to our destination from memory. hooray! ANyway, this should be in a post on our blog about our vacation, so I'll stop here.
Good for your memories! I'll repeat what I said about backups and Plans B, in hopes of remembering it myself. I know I really need to memorize more phone numbers, having become very lazy about that lately. Actually, it's part laziness and part everyone's having so many numbers now.
My PDA once or twice froze up like that and I had to do the paper clip reset thing and then restore from the desktop ap.
Just to show its solidarity with the PDA, my cell phone decided to freeze up last night -- on, not off, but not responsive. (I don't think it's based on Windows....) I was in the car at the time and couldn't do anything about it except contemplate removing the battery when I got home. After a few minutes it came back to life on its own, however. For now.
It appears our PDA (Handspring Solo) is completely dead. I'll take it apart to see, but I have tried all the paperclip tricks, even doing the more extravagant resets with holding the power button, and down and up arrows, etc.
Is isn't even that useful as a boat anchor, at least not for reasonably sized boats.
I did purposely buy the cheapest one I could find that was still like a palm pilot, ie. not the cheaper, organizer types, since I had gotten tired of them breaking. This one lasted a while, though still not as long as I'd like.
The cleaning lady at my office and I were talking about computers, and she said she had a "really old" computer at home and she was wondering if she would be able to get one of the old computers in my office when I left. Her definition of old is "4 or 5 years", and my definition of old is more like 10.
Jon, I have an old Handspring you can have if you need it. It worked last time I checked.
A generally good gadgetary idea:
If it stops working, why not take it apart?
Another generally good gadgetary idea:
If it stops working, why not bust it with a sledgehammer?
I'm not much for busting things with sledgehammers, but yes, I do like taking things apart, particularly those that are already broken, because then I can't do any damage.
Just need some time to take a look at it.
Peter - that might be useful. Heather and I have been trying to figure out what is the right solution. It is handy to have the Palm Pilot on trips, but other than that, it doesn't need to be portable, so we could probably figure out a way around buying batteries for the palm pilot all the time for just those couple occasions a year when we want it. I suppose since I carry my laptop everywhere now, I could just store things on there. Or store them on the internet, and sync them to the laptop sometimes. I started looking into LDAP, but didn't get very far.
