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23 Jul 2016

Genealogist's Rage Against The Machine

Contrary to the above snapshot, it has been a very unhappy week here at Family History Exploration. The work horse that is laptop number #3 decided to put up some opposition to the heat. Despite opening all available doors and windows, Number Three voiced its concerns in no uncertain terms. The fan reached an impressive crescendo, George Solti would have been impressed with, before the screen dramatically flickered on and off.

To add insult to injury, just as my workhorse was lighting up the town with its own special show, the mouse froze. Predictably, the Excel spreadsheet I was 'using' flashed one last time before everything shut down.

This was not good. I enjoyed spending Sundays moving boxes around in Excel. Now I had to convey a very sick laptop rapidly to some kind of life support.

I regained some composure as I chatted to the Ideal PC experts. Most stuff should be recoverable, they said, as long as you've got it backed up. Errr... This wasn't very helpful. We'll need to run some diagnostics, they said. They could run a bath as far as I was concerned. As long as I got Employee Number #3 back.

Do you remember the nineties? Let me tell you, friends, I've just been back, and it wasn't pretty. Leaving aside the joys of 'Rhythm of the Night', a little known fact is that Corona nearly lost the lyrics to this anthem, due to a lack of memory on their nineties pc.

With Number Three out of commission, Number One (which shared a charging cable) was also unavailable. Number Four was a prize in a raffle and Number Two was as good as its name implies.

This just left a very ancient house pc with Microsoft Works 2.0 (1996). I also realised I had 110 school reports to write that very day. Who said you can't turn back time? Cher, I've found the secret.

Did you know folks, that documents with more than 17000 entries won't fit. Or with more than one sheet. Inconvenient as well as unhygienic. Want to fill in, say, 110 rows, with 'could try harder'? Not possible. You're copying and pasting that manually, fella.

Fast forward back to 2016 with a song written by a duck at the top of the charts, and I'm told the reason for my bedroom sound-and-light show. Dust.

Having been reunited with laptop #3, it has a serious amount of work to catch up on.

Here ends the account of Genealogist's Rage Against The Machine. For now, at least.

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