Hmph. One of our PCs—the one Sam has been using for writing, and the one with the fastest processor and most RAM—has decided that sometimes she doesn’t have a NIC. It’s integrated into the motherboard, and sometimes she sees it, sometimes she doesn’t. It just started this morning, and I’ve yet to find any rhyme or reason to when she can or can’t see the NIC. Sometimes the diagnostic lights are on, sometimes they’re dead. There haven’t been any changes at all to any kind of settings or to the actual hardware. I have to conclude that the integrated NIC is unreliable, which means I need to stick in one of the spare cards we keep around.
But all of Sam’s data is there. And I’m reluctant to mess with anything that could possibly cause even the slightest further delay in that writing project being done, gone, outta here, finished. I don’t want to think about it that project again. Ever. Yes, he could write on any other machine, but only that one has one of the pieces of software he likes installed on it. And his email is there.
There’s no reason that he can’t work on that machine without regard to whether or not the NIC is working. In fact, I have to wonder if he wouldn’t get finished more quickly without an internet connection, so there wouldn’t be the possibility of chatting with other people or falling in to web surfing. But I’m his partner, not his mother. It’s his job to decide what is a distraction and what is necessary for writing his way.
And if I don’t replace it before he comes home, he might decide to be further sidetracked by replacing it himself. I certainly had other plans for what I was going to do with the afternoon, but admittedly, if that were my primary PC, there would be no question that I’d stop and replace the card right now.
Hmph.
