New Blog: My Daemons are Crashing
My daemons are crashing, the computer tech said. I thought I’d misheard over the crush of the computer store, but then she repeated it. My smart phone wasn’t working because the computer daemons in it were crashing. Computer daemons are programs that wait in the background until you call them into service, sort of like the original idea of genies, or jinn, that give magical help if you have the power to call and control them. Not too far off from some of the mysterious workings of computers.
Once I was a technophobe, but as I stood there in the computer store waiting for my phone to come back to life, and I felt bereft. I couldn’t call, text, check e-mail, or . . . my hand held office was broken. I have not only embraced technology, but I have drunk deep of the technological Kool-aid. I didn’t realize how deep until the moment I stood in the buzz of the computer store and mourned my non-functioning phone.
I was suddenly a writer that couldn’t write, because I didn’t have a pen, pencil, or piece of paper to my name. I was so distressed that I left my husband to babysit the phone while I ran down to the brick and mortar bookstore to buy a pen and a notebook. I also picked up a new book to read, because I was a writer in a bookstore, come on, I had to buy a book. What book? Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, which I’ve actually never read. I decided recently that I needed to fix that, and there’s no time like the present. It was somehow reassuring to hold a real book that was written long before the thought of computers, back when a writer had to have good penmanship so that his editor could read his manuscript. I admit I’m glad I don’t have to write my novels by hand, in fact, I write almost exclusively on my iPad and iPhone, and main computers now. I even take notes on my phone most of the time instead of sticky notes. I’m writing this on my iPad, while we watch, “Fast & Furious 6” on the big screen LED TV with a Blue Ray DVD. Does anyone remember when if you wanted to watch a movie it had to be on the three, maybe four channels, that you could get on your rabbit-eared TV? The smart phone you’re holding in your hand has more computing power than the computers that sent the Apollo spacecrafts to the moon. How freaking cool is that?
How many of you remember Space Invaders, and how everyone was mesmerized by those little blips on the screen? Now the graphics on the latest games are so amazing they look like mini-movies. Would any of us have guessed how far the computer revolution would come into our homes and change the way we do not only business, but our recreation and play? E-books, electronic books are perilously close to outselling paperback books. Time spent in front of our TV and computer screens take more of our days than being outside in the real world. I know I had no idea when I watched that first rough game move jerkily across the monochrome screen what was coming, and how much of modern life was going to be so closely intertwined with it that one of the things our government fears most is an EMP, electromagnetic pulse bomb that would take out all the pretties that we use everyday.
My daemons are coming when called again, to work their spells. The magic smoke is back in the little box in my hand, and the world is strangely more firm.
28 thoughts on “New Blog: My Daemons are Crashing”
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So sorry about your phone! Hope all is well soon. I just got a new phone a few weeks ago myself, and I’m still discovering things it can do. I have Pac Man on my phone, now I think I’ll go look for Space Invaders!
I recently decided to start buying “real” books again. I found myself frequently tapping the edge of the page, expecting it to magically switch to the next one. Pretty sure it’s time to put down the e-books for a while.
Your one of my favorite authors
once upon a time my dad tried to add some memory to a laptop this is back when you actually had to use you screwdrivers and insane amounts of knowledge to add memory to laptop and he managed to cross two connections with the screwdriver and ended up letting the smoke out of the laptop it never worked again and since then we have always called a broken computer smokeless I’m glad to hear your phone is no longer smokeless
You are so very right about how technology is taking over our world. People would rather sit in front of their computer screens and keep in touch by texting and email. As a child I loved to write with pen and paper, though my handwriting was awful. I miss those days, but in some ways it is nice to be able to write and have others be able to read all the strange, weird, and sometimes wild things that go on inside my head. Thanks for sharing the different worlds that fill your head!
Not only are we immersed in the world of technology, but it happened in less than 25 years. That is the really scary part. I remember having the rotary telephone followed by the princess phone with a wire that connected to a wall and was on a “party line”. Those three of four channels on the rabbit eared TV were usually in black and white and a 19″ screen was considered large. I volunteered in the library so I would always have easy access to a real live book made of paper. Now I am lost without my phone in my pocket where ever I go, TV has hundreds of channels in High Definition and surround sound with the average TV at least 32″ and many as large as 60″, and I can download books on my e-reader in seconds, it is smaller than a paperback but holds hundreds of titles. Amazing!
Indeed, what the World now Fears MOST is an EMP, or even a CME… Coronal Mass Eruption… from our Sun. SO MUCH of our everyday business, our economy, and our Governments now TOTALLY DEPEND on the electronic wizardry that now Enslaves us. I’m glad you were able to get the Daemons back under control… But Are they? Or are YOU? The world of TRON has grown up, and whether or not we can disconnect ourselves has become the quandary. As Aldus Huxley said; “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” (Sounds like the theme of a good story…. Hmm… Now where did I put my pen?)
I spent the last week in a place with no cable, satellite, or internet. It was kind of refreshing. Then today my sisters phone died and it could take as long as a week for the replacement to arrive. Im not sure she will survive it.
Yes, I remember the black n white, rabbit eared T.V. sets. And there’s no way I would have believed back then if someone had told me of the tech advances we have made today. It’s wild. I didn’t use to read e-books until about 6 months ago and now I have more of those than hand held books.
However, all my “Laurell K. Hamilton” books are either paperback or hard cover books. I just feel like if the author and or book means a lot to you, then you should own a hard copy of them if you can.
This is my exact issue. My laptop had mysteriously died. In the middle of a book. My publisher has been alerted to my inability to make my deadline (tomorrow) as three book is not yet half finished. And I have no tablet. I have but one Samsung Galaxy S3 mini. Insufficient and lacking the technology to complete Samantha’s Hell. 🙁
That’s the exact same issue I had a few years ago. Since then I have become a fanatic for backing up my data. I write and backup to drop box constantly. Once a week I back up to my external hard drive.
Most of the time I wrote my notes on paper so I don’t have to switch windows in my computer but sometimes I’ll wrote on my tablet just because my laptop won’t fit in my purse.
I hope you back up your work in the couture so this doesn’t happen again friend.
I feel your pain. My son and I were recently talking about this as we compared apps on our iphone. I still remember my first cell phone, all those years ago. All it did was make and receive phone calls. Now, my iphone and iPad have my entire life on them and if they’re not working right, it’s almost painful.
While I love my kindle app, I’ll never give up the feel of a paper book in my hands. Of course, most of them are your books…… Lol
Glad to hear you’re back up and running though, and for the record, I keep all sorts of receipt slips in my pocket for jotting down notes and such still, and several pens in my jeep, tool bag, work shop, etc…..
I sorry your phone daemons lost their power. My phone daemons lost their power long ago, it’s called have to conserve cash. Since than all my phone does is ring, sometimes. I’m glad you got your’s fixed. Hope you can write now. Thanks for the books you’ve written and I can’t wait for more.
I have most of your Anita Blake Novels on my tablet. I have all of them that I could get in Hard Back…I prefer the actual book to the ebook. There is something to be said of curling up in bed with a good paper book. The tactile feel of the pages as they turn in your hand. The smells of the binding. These are things that an ebook can’t give you. However when traveling, ebooks are a ton lighter to carry! Love your work.
In order for my husband not to be upset about my book habit I had to agree to only have certain books in “hard copy”. I mostly buy e-books now…because otherwise I don’t have enough house for the books and I to live together.
I read Alice in Wonderland/through the Looking Glass when I was a teen. It was my mother’s and may have been an original printing. I lost it many years ago during one of my numerous moves. I still look for another on eBay and @ my local used book store. Loved both stories immensely. I hope you do too. I’m pretty sure you will.
“All your technology are belong to us.” 😉
Once again you make me smile, then think, then smile again – thank you. X
WHAT IS EVEN SCARIER IS THERE IS A WHOLE GENERATION THAT WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO FUNCTION WITH OUT IT. WE DON’T EVEN TEACH CURSIVE WRITING IN SCHOOL ANY MORE.
I read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass 23 years ago. I had an old annotated edition, that explained the political satire that the pages are rife with. It helped and I fell in love with the world that is so much more complete than that created by Disney. I also had the phone issue recently mine stopped ‘seeing’ my extended memory and I thought I had lost 3 yrs worth of irreplaceable things. Pictures of my girls and of Judy Blume at a rare signing event. And of other performing music……..
I had a panic attack and cried real tears. It’s sad because no device that can be ruined so easily should have this much control over our lives.
I think I may understand what you are saying. I have an IPad (3 yrs old), haven’t figured out everything. I have an IPhone (2yrs old), that I don’t have figured out either. While I may be called computer literate by people snow less than I do, I am dumber than rain because I am not adventurous, I’m afraid. Your Anita books are on my shelves as keepers.
Messed that up too. I can’t type
I’m showing my age here, but I remember when we got our first TV. I was about 5. Black and white. Just 2 channels. It was a HUGE event a few years later when we got a third channel. We didn’t have a phone then. We went next door to use my grandmother’s phone, which was a party line.
I do spend a lot of time on the computer and I use it for writing. Did medical transcription on one for more years than I care to remember, too. My handwriting is so bad even I can’t read it, so I had to make concessions for that, but I still don’t have a cell phone. I kind of like that people can’t bother me 24/7. I have a garden and grow as many veggies as I can. I knit, sew, cook. I’d be WAY less lost than a lot of people, if the electronics didn’t work. It’s not that I hate them or object, its that I don’t like being helpless without them, so I choose not to depend on them. Now, the internet I would miss a LOT, if I didn’t have access, but I have a lot of worlds in my head and a lot of books, so I would probably manage ok.
Such amazing advances in technology to stand in awe of…and yet we still tend to complain about them when they don’t work the way we want them to. 😉
Glad to hear you’re back online and funcitoning at full capacity. I, too, could not imagine having to write without some type of computer. I was sad to find that I could barely write a single-page letter to my grandmother the other day without my hand cramping, heh.
Three cheers for technology, and three cheers for the stone age backups–just in case.
I had a nook for a short time and realized that I missed my paper books that I had sold to buy the darn thing. I got rid of the nook and went to the used book store to start buying back all of my books, I even found ones I had forgotten about from my teenage years.
But Happy to say that I now have Nightseer, the up to date Anita set and the Marry set all back and in paper the way that I original started my collection back in my senior year of high school of 1999.
I even still have my original signed copy of A Stroke of Midnight; that you and Darla sent to me as a wedding gift when I invited the two of you to my wedding 9 years ago. Tec. may come and go but print will always stay alive. 🙂
Space Invaders was a technological wonder to us kids who grew up with “Pong”. That was a game you could set, go eat dinner, and come back and it would STILL be playing.
Pa-dink, Pa-dunk….Pa-dink, Pa-dunk……
First, I have to laugh at this blog post because it was very ADHD-like (I have ADHD, my conversations often go something like this, haha).
Secondly, I can relate…I am not able to go into a bookstore without buying a book (and I cannot get into the habit of using ereaders…I prefer real books).
Lastly, and seemingly completely off-topic…but since you mentioned tv and monster movies, etc…was wondering if you have watched NBC’s Hannibal? If not, I highly recommend it. Mads Mikkelsen does a phenomenal job as Hannibal; the cinematography is beautiful; and the writing is great. If you have seen it, what are your thoughts on the show?
You know the mark of a gifted writer is taking something so mundane and unremarkable as getting a phone repaired, and making it sound like a minor magical adventure of sorts. Thank you for sharing your gift.
As someone born during the computer age, I myself, would have never guessed just how paramount and mainstream computer usage would become. That and how reliant we humans, as a species, have become. I am terrified and intimidated by the idea of the digital age getting a hard reset. It’d feel like “The Walking Dead”, Internet deprived zombies included.