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Computers Are Alive Too?


We say any object that acts on its own, based on its own principles or intentions, is alive. We of course don't know whether it is sentient (think single celled organisms) but they are nevertheless still alive.

Going along that line of thought, I bring you back to computers. Yes, we invented them, yes we programmed them to function based on rules. Technically that means that each computer when faced with the same stimuli should respond the same way. I wish it was that simple. Sure, simple computers like a handheld calculator will act as such (I haven't heard of a simple one going bonkers yet) but sometimes, coms BSOD for unknown reasons. Alot of problems happen sporadically, or for no reason.

Case in point. I had just installed Win7 on a new com I got, with a fresh SSD just flown in. The com booted fine, and rebooted fine too. I ran out of time, so I couldn't install anything, and decided to shut it down. The next day, I swapped the order of hard disks around, to better organise the internals of my com, and lo and behold, the com wouldn't boot up. You might think that the swapping caused the problem. But see here, it doesn't affect computers nowadays. It's not programmed to be that way, and as far as experience goes, it doesn't happen to coms that I know (and my friends too).

So having no choice, I tried to recover Win7 using my installation disk. Apparently it had a corrupted partition table. WTF indeed. Swapping disks do not alter any data within the disks so it wasn't the fault of the swapping. Memory bits and bytes are permanent on permanent media. They're not supposed to change either. And also, the partition table wasn't corrupted the day before so why now? The com just acted on its own and decided not to boot, and to have a corrupted partition table.

Just two weeks ago, suddenly my uTorrent stopped working as an "installed version" and asked me to install it again. (The uTorrent client is special in that it's both the installer and the program that you run. The first time you use it, it installs, and the next, it runs.) My Chrome shortcut also suddenly stopped working and I had to delete it and create a new one. WTF again.

So these things got their own life? It sure seems so!

Also, in case you're wondering, I did manage to fix the partition table using the Win7 installation disc, and my com's been running fine ever since. A CHKDSK also revealed nothing wrong with the disk. No bad sectors too. Another WTF moment.

19:18 14 Aug 2012
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