I will never write about my computer again

I think I will have to write this a thousand times.   Earlier this morning I was worrying about the back up program not working and guess what happened this afternoon - all the media card readers stopped working.   Reboot didn't fix this so it was back to Dell.  After another 25 minutes on the phone to Dell we sorted the problem.   Those who the Gods want to punish they first let them buy a Dell!

At least it is all working okay again - for now!

The rebuild has started

Well here we go again. It doesn't seem like four months have passed since I rebuilt my system but it is. Anyway progress to date. I have installed Adobe Lightroom and the previous catalogue appears to be working - this is a real relief. I have uploaded the current years image files, only 60GB and am now starting on last years - 160 GB. The only hitch, and it really isn't a big one, is that I downloaded the beta version of Safari - not a good idea - and I have had to delete this and will reinstall the latest offical version.

So sofar so good. I am going out to test my new camera and hopefully when I come back I will have another year's image files uploaded.

Its done

Well Dell have completed the reinstall - it only took just under 28 hours!   That, of course, is unfair the actual work tonight took just over two hours.  Now I have the task of rebuilding the computer to the way I want it to be.  This will take a few days so wish me luck.

Computer update

At the moment all is going well.  They are downloading a 105 mb driver for the video card so I haven't got to do anything.  I must say remote assist is a wonderful thing and I enjoy watching the technician work.   At least my blood pressure is a lot lower tonight than it was last night.

Waiting for Godo

I have never been that good at waiting - I always find it irritating but I am having to wait for the Dell person to ring me back - as he said he would.  Well it is nearly two hours after he said he would call back and nothing.   So what do I do?   Call Dell?   Well at this time it is usually very busy so I would be sitting for 20 + minutes listening to some inane musac or wait for the phone call.   I think I am going to have to suck it up and just wait for the call.   This is really starting to annoy me. 

AARRGGHH!!!!!!!!

Ian if you ever read this you can take that smug look off your face.   My computer has gone wrong again.  yesterday I mentioned that we had an electrical storm right over head and this caused some problems with my network.  Well today my computer finally stopped recognising the external card reader leaving me with no way of uploading files that had been captured by my camera.   I had put this off for too long - I contacted Dell.   That is 5 hours I would not wish on my worst enemy.    The long and short of it is that I now have a none functioning computer.

The problem was diagnosed a software conflict and so I was instructed that I would have to reinstall the operating system.   This mean I would have to rebuild the computer as though it was a brand new computer - a problem but not a fatal one.    So I followed the instruction given to me on the phone and reinstalled the operating system.   We then tried to install the drivers and the whole process fell to pieces.  I couldn't get the drivers to work.   I downloaded the drivers from the internet - still didn't work.  I then started to ask for an engineer to attend and sort the problem out - this was not possible as my warranty didn't cover this.   However, I kept insisting on this - so the technician on the phone had to go and talk to his supervisor.   Another hour wait for the supervisor to ring back.   I went through this again and we tried to install the drivers again.   I then found out that I had installed the wrong operating system on the computer, my wife has a 32 bit Vista laptop and my desktop is 64 bit - no wonder the drivers didn't work.   It was not 10 at night and I had had enough.   We will pick this story up in the morning.

So what have I learnt from this episode?   Well first that even premium support from Dell means dealing with the dreaded Indian call centres.   This is nothing against the people who are usually very helpful and obliging but, and this is a big, huge massive BUT, they don't speak english english and no matter how many lessons they go through this will never change.   I have nothing but respect for their technical prowess they just cannot communicate well down the phone.   This is not the people's fault it is the fault of Dell.   They have cut corners on support by out sourcing to India.   telephone communication is a pure verbal communication with no non verbal communication involved and so the message has to be very clear.   When either party doesn't understand exactly what is being said then this is an accident waiting to happen.  Tonight one happened.  I made a mistake, however the person on the phone was not bale to overcome this because he couldn't check which disk I was putting into the machine.   However, his instructions were not clear, especially when things went wrong.   The only moral I would learn from this whole sorry story is to buy a really good support package, one that sends an engineer on site to sort your problems out.   Tomorrow I hopefully will address this deficiency.   However, there will no doubt be more twists and turns in this story.  Oh happy days.

Experimentation

As photographers we are used to failure.  Unless I am unusual, and in this particular area I don't think I am, we are more unsuccessful than successful.   We do a shoot and take a number of photographs, we look at the contact sheets/images on the screen and select only those that meet whatever criteria we have set,   the rest are discarded.  We define ourselves not by our successes but our failures.  Indeed it is what drives us on, to perfect our art, to make the next photograph better than the last.  But we know failure, we know its frustration, its stigma.   For every success we have a thousand failures.  Indeed recently it has been estimated that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become really competent in whatever field of endeavour we are working.

So why this dwelling on failure?   Well I have had one of those shoots.  I spent most of the morning in  Swithland Woods, a popular woodland area.  For the most part it was deserted and so I had time just to ponder and think about what I was taking.  In fact there really wasn't much to take.   I had continued the experiment with the tilt and shift lens.  I also continued to work with the G9 and tethered flash.  But nothing really worked.   So I changed my approach and started to use 2nd curtain flash on bushes as they swayed in the stiff breeze.  This was far more successful,  but not what I had thought about when I set out.   So this is why I started to think about failure.  Sometimes things go totally wrong.  Sometime they just don't gel but perhaps the worst is when they don't do anything at all.  When you get one of those days it is really frustrating.  Today was one those days.   Still there is always tomorrow.