Well, in keeping with the "what is the meaning of life?" mood lately, let me talk about my day today.
I have had trouble with my iMac for a while now, and its power supply finally died back in May. Since it was out of warranty, I was sure I'd have to consider a new machine, since undoubtedly the new power supply would cost something like ten thousand dollars. Well, turns out apple has essentially recalled the early iMac G5 models, due to overheating that caused failed power supplies, displays, etc. They replaced the main logic board and power supply, and sent me on my merry way (no charge).
Well, the machine was still having trouble, going to sleep repeatedly, etc., but the problem was intermittent until this last week. It got to the point where I couldn't work anymore, because it would go to sleep every 30 seconds, and finally hang. I called back to apple, and the guy thought the temperature sensors on the motherboard and the hard drive might be faulty. I made an appointment for this morning, and as an afterthought, I quickly backed up my 10,000 pictures, 7,000 songs, a hundred or so documents, and tax returns from 1997 onward.
Back in I went, and they replaced the motherboard again, the power supply again, and the hard drive temp sensor for the first time. After testing, the tech thought it was ok, and said I could come get it. Since I wasn't going to be back for a couple of hours, he said he'd do an additional "bake" of the machine, which basically amounts to running everything on the machine at once, and getting it as hot as possible in about five minutes. Which exposes temperature problems in a big hurry.
Well, the hard drive seems like it was the problem. After the bake test, what had been a tempermental hard drive was now a dead hard drive. Dead. Gone. Trash. No data left. The tech gently asked me whether I had a backup of the data or not, and I said, "partial." You can see where this is going.
He "tried" to get data back, but couldn't. So I got a new hard drive (also "free", if my time and sentiment are worth nothing), and my machine is once again fast and happy, like a mac should be. If I haven't already said so, I love apple. Their stuff just works, has very high coolness factor, and after competing against Microsoft's tactics for a few years, I have sworn off Windows forever. If my G5 had been a Microsoft product, I would have gotten to pay for an "upgrade" to my system to fix the power supply. But enough of my soapbox rantings. Back to philosophy.
As I rode the ferry home from Seattle, a thought crossed my mind: "I didn't back up my address book." This was a big blow. You have to understand that it contained names and addresses from as far back as 1986--people on other continents who I can't reach now--unless perhaps I can find a way to track them down on the web. It hurts.
But surprisingly, the worst part of this for me was the loss of the people in my address book who aren't alive anymore. My grandmother and Kathryn's grandparents; my friend from grad school; and so on. I have always had this strange habit of leaving people in my address book forever, even if they have died. In some small, geeky, digital way, it kept them more alive for me. I know I can add them back, but it made me start thinking about how a person's life is defined. When my grandmother died, did she cease to exist? Does "she", the living entity who had a name, disappear forever? If there's a fire and a hard drive crash, and all images of her are lost, is she gone forever, once those who knew her die as well, taking all memories of her image with them?
And coupled with this, I considered how close I came to losing every image of my children's lives up to the ages of 4 and 2. What about those years? Did they happen? Would anybody but Kathryn and I care about the loss? I look at my own baby pictures with a kind of fascination, that I came from there to here. But I don't look at them and feel the pride and love and amazement and all those things that only a parent feels.
Are memories and pictures real? Or just a reminder of a fleeting moment in time that gave us pleasure?
My title also comes in part from the song in Rent called "Seasons of Love", which asks "how do we measure a year?" The response in the play is things like,
"In Daylights - In Sunsets
In Midnights - In Cups Of Coffee
In Inches - In Miles
In Laughter - In Strife
In diapers, report cards, in spoke wheels, in speeding tickets
In contracts, dollars, in funerals, in births.
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes -
how do you figure a last year on earth?
Figure in love
Figure in love
Figure in love. Measure in love.
Seasons of love. Seasons of love."
I always liked that song, not so much for the mushy sentiment, but more for the grounding in reality. Each minute is a time to live or die, and maybe there's nothing before or after.
I know that actions of those who came before have lasting impacts on history, etc., and maybe that's the legacy? Shakespeare is always the one I think about--here's a guy who just wrote plays and poetry, and is still known by name to much of the world 400 years later. He's a great example that we do outlive our bodies. But lacking his celebrity, what about the rest of us?
I am really really really really really glad I didn't lose all my pictures. Time to update the backup strategy.
bmc :)
Update on 7/29--I was looking for a file in my Documents folder the other day, and came across an innocuous looking folder called "Microsoft User Data". It hit me that perhaps I didn't lose my address book after all, and actually welled up tears. Once I get Office re-installed, I'll be sure, but I think it's all in there...huge relief...
