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Good Old Roger2
Jan. 26th, 2006 02:51 pmMany of you know about the tragic demise of my former computer, Roger2. It died last spring, right as I was in the middle of writing my first manuscript ever, and thus I was computer-less for approximately a month, before I rearranged my finances and purchased Sylvester, an Apple PowerBook.
At the time that Roger2 died, I received a lot of help from the IT guys in my department. Roger2's hard drive was perfectly okay, so the techies hooked it up to a device to rescue all of the files that I needed. The drive had about 11 GB of memory, so all of the necessary documents fit onto two DVD's. It's kind of humbling to see hours and hours of work reduced to such a small size, but there you have it. Nowadays there are lots of MP3 players that have a larger capacity than Roger2.
Anyway, I have recently been trying to decide which reference software to use on my new computer; I have hundreds and hundreds of papers and must rely on some sort of system to keep them organized. Roger2 had EndNote and about 350 references, and I am finally settling with EndNote (for better or for worse) for Sylvester. But I discovered not long ago that my EndNote library from Roger2 was not on one of the DVDs. This represents many hours of typing, so I had to briefly revive Roger2's hard drive today.
It was an odd event, like a seance or something of the sort. I was reminded of all of Roger2's quirks--Windows98, the bouncing sheep screensaver, the lack of USB compatability, and the security of having an operating system that was archaic enough to not be targeted by worms and viruses.
I bought Roger2 on eBay when I was a junior in college--it was my first internet-capable computer. The month between computers was extremely difficult and made me so aware of how much of my line of work (and my entertainment) is dependent on my computer. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to go back to having a shared computer. What a crazy world.
At the time that Roger2 died, I received a lot of help from the IT guys in my department. Roger2's hard drive was perfectly okay, so the techies hooked it up to a device to rescue all of the files that I needed. The drive had about 11 GB of memory, so all of the necessary documents fit onto two DVD's. It's kind of humbling to see hours and hours of work reduced to such a small size, but there you have it. Nowadays there are lots of MP3 players that have a larger capacity than Roger2.
Anyway, I have recently been trying to decide which reference software to use on my new computer; I have hundreds and hundreds of papers and must rely on some sort of system to keep them organized. Roger2 had EndNote and about 350 references, and I am finally settling with EndNote (for better or for worse) for Sylvester. But I discovered not long ago that my EndNote library from Roger2 was not on one of the DVDs. This represents many hours of typing, so I had to briefly revive Roger2's hard drive today.
It was an odd event, like a seance or something of the sort. I was reminded of all of Roger2's quirks--Windows98, the bouncing sheep screensaver, the lack of USB compatability, and the security of having an operating system that was archaic enough to not be targeted by worms and viruses.
I bought Roger2 on eBay when I was a junior in college--it was my first internet-capable computer. The month between computers was extremely difficult and made me so aware of how much of my line of work (and my entertainment) is dependent on my computer. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to go back to having a shared computer. What a crazy world.
