Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Outer Limits


There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits. ~Opening narration of the Outer Limits (1960s)

Yes, I have reached what must be the Outer Limits. In the span of one week, I have fried three computers...well, technically two computers and three hard drives. I am now typing on my computer with my husband's old hard drive, which he managed to revive today after I killed it yesterday. All have had different problems, but in the end the results were that I had no working computer.

Do you want to know more? In my last entry, I related that our phone line had been down, but we still had DSL. Then it came back and everything worked for a few hours. The next morning, the phone lines and the DSL were dead. They said lines were cut somewhere and it should be up by Friday. A day later everything worked but then...

Today I was drying my daughter's hair to hurry her along so we could get our shopping and errands done. The hair dyer suddenly seem to be losing power. I looked up at the lights to see if we were experiencing a brown out, but everything else was just fine. I turned it off and on a few times and it just stayed that way, so I tried to finish with what I had and suddenly without any reason, it began working normally again.

There is more! I get to the health food grocery store today that I have shopped for thirteen years and have never seen this problem, not even once, but the electronic scale would not work....No, I am not kidding! After several tries to get it to reset, the clerk was finally able to get it to work.

Folks, I am living out one of my daydreaming-mares that plays out a poignant message of how much I rely on technology...perhaps it has come to the place that was worshipping it? I seriously doubt if I spend as much time in prayer as I do in front of a computer screen, justifying it as I squeeze in a prayer about something or other while a program loads, if my daughter is not in need of my attention at that moment first.

Am I rethinking my priorities and how I manage my time? Yes, I am. Absolutely. Along with praying, cross-stitching, crocheting, drawing, reading, gardening, and general housework are far less complicated and now seem to be far more attractive pursuits to me.

Progress on the data recovery is being made. My husband can now see my data files on my old hard drive, but he cannot grab them yet. I feel the Lord has told me that he will recover them, so it is just a matter of when. My gaming computer has not been touched...yet. We are doing one hard drive at a time. I am again trying to load programs on this one, but this time we are backing it up...heavily.

~ My Lord, if You are trying to get my attention away from my computer and more on You, I have gotten the message. Help me keep my computer activities within Your will from now on, so that nothing replaces You as my highest priority. ~