Page 22 - June21T

From the Flight Deck
by Kevin R. Dingman
Head Games
Pilots must manage distractions.
The “patient” presented as a combination of cold temperature neither my whimpering appeal nor
a black screen with white letters displaying CRITICAL FAILURE followed by a co-
matose SAFE MODE. This electronic workhorse travels in my Jeep, the cockpit of the 737, and aboard the Duke – a well-padded aluminum brief- case for a home. But the briefcase re- ceives no exceptional handling. TSA scans and searches, hotel van loading and unloading, jarring, dropping, and wide variations in temperature are its lot in life. Well, they were its lot in life...its virtual existence faded to an eternal black screen. A post-mortem forensic investigation exposed the cause of death: Due to the minus- cule clearance inside the hard drive,
20 • TWIN & TURBINE / June 2021
start-ups and a malicious virus had conspired against its delicate innards thus destroying both the body and mind of its hardworking hard drive.
Measured and Mature
The operating system, programs, pictures, music and documents were all lost. SAFE MODE was apparently not so safe after all. The apocalyptic event called for a measured and ma- ture response. My unbridled “OMG” and teary-eyed whimpering appeal, “there’s no place like home,” which had worked in the past, failed to help. Next, a geek-wizard from the Emerald City computer fix-it store was sought for consultation. But
the wizard were able to return me, or the hard drive, to Kansas. The al- ternative response was to follow the yellow brick road to the web and order a new laptop.
Come hither and behold for all to see the Dell “Inspiron” running Win- dows 10, the newest Internet Explorer and the latest iteration of Word for Of- fice. Never approach a steer from the front, a horse from the rear, or, from any direction, a person over 60 with a new PC (or cell phone), especially one who neglected to back up their old data. Certainly, you’ve had a com- parable level of been-there-done-that. Not since getting my first smartphone have I struggled so desperately not to