I know that a lot of people have fun using their computers, playstations, gamepads, handhelds or mobile phones for playing games. That is ok for sure, a big business to make money … and at the end everyone should do at his or her pleasure anyway.

Personally I’m not much into this kind of amusement. I was never ever really good in driving a car on a TV screen and besides SimCity and a few early DOS based computer games I’ve never did spend much time with "games".

So when I speak about playing with my computers, I’m talking about spending time with them discovering something new. Learning or modify things and therefore making them able to do or serve things they couldn’t do before.

Last few days I did spend time playing with my new toys which I have mentioned earlier before. It was good time and I learned a lot about it and got a deeper idea about the concepts behind. Now it would not have been even necessary, as for I got an unlocked version I couldn’t prevent to read about the "breaking it" instructions and knowing about was the "point of no return" starting to "play" with it.

Today now feeling prepare enough, I finally did it … a full cycle through all … ending up in restoring initial and original state again. Somewhere in between I must have missed something as for not all features did work in "broken" mode as wished.

But this is nothing I do mind – it was no wated time at all – just the intro into another "playing session". And I’m sure it will not last long until I can’t resist anymore, starting again with it.

Sure it is not necessary …. but it is possible!

If asked about, I really would vote for establishing some kind of official and obligate "Using Permission"  for Computer Systems. Some permission you have to own first, before being allowed to buy and/or operate any kind of Personal Computer – best combined with some really difficult knowledge TEST!!!

Really!! It would help for sure keeping efforts low for those being familiar with computers already.

Ask yourself?! How many time were you already asked about to give support and fix some issue on a system you’ve never seen before. Just because it is own by some friend or family and they know about you as familiar and experienced with stuff?

So was I! Yesterday I was called by a guy (not teeling about the person) telling me that his system would refuse to boot. Coming up with a message about "no bootloader found" …. Doesn’t that tell everthing? Already

Especially when it is your 2nd system and you have used other computers before?

What have you done to force this problem? … Nussing!! …. Nothing I asked? …. Yeah honestly and absolutely nothing!
(Gald he didn’t say I swear though)

Loosing the usual hour on the phone by guiding him through several BIOS screens and boot menu options without being able to see them myself we figured it out. Directly!! After I made him changing several different settings and discussing the result of the following tests to boot with him. Yeah! I’ve figured it out, that the boot device order had changed … "suddenly" … "by itself" … "like a mystery"?! From SATA drive 0 to 3 …., removeable devices like floppy were generally disabled and .. how clever! the DVD ROM came closely behind the harddisk!

Come on boy! Am I stupid? Do I still believe in the tooth fairy?!

Ok, this time it was family and I did not mind (telling myself again). But at the end it turned out that it MUST have changed automatically when he RESTORED an image backup shortly before …… oh my ….  

Recently “Suzi” seems to like my company and extra care!

Today on my way back from the gas station my speed indicator went back to zero while driving.

Hm ….. I thought and directly stopped at my Suzuki dealer which is half on the way back home. The dealer immediately assumes that it would be the transmission unit attached sidewise on the front wheel and checking his computer he offered me the bad news that this spare part would not be in stock actually.

But then he smiled and said …. Would you mind using a “used” part?!

I had a good laugh about and said: “My bike is now 16 years old – What do you think? It just depends on the price you know! Now he smiled too and said I can give it to you for half the price of the new one and you can directly fit it in here using my tools….. “Thats a word!” I said and immediately headed into his workshop.

Shortly fifteen minutes later I left going to clean my hands at home. Did I wrote that I smiled about  when I lately had dirty hands repairing the bike too?! Really not that I would need that every day! gulp