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Why This Blog?

The name of the blog is the best piece of advice I ever received in my life.

It wasn't meant as advice, and it only barely squeaks by my college calculus professor's consistent admonition, "don't make a hard problem out of an easy problem,"  This particular piece of advice came from a fellow undergraduate--I never knew his name--who staffed the computer lab where I typed up my honors thesis on a computer which, 25 years ago, required two 5 1/4 inch floppies: one to run the operating system and the other to hold one's data.  The one to hold the data could only hold about 100 pages of text.  My thesis was 99.  So, when I wanted to save it, I first had to delete the original saved file in order to make room on my floppy for the revised version (apparently it never occurred to me  that I was legally allowed to own more than one floppy disk at a time).  Naturally, I broke out in hives during the several seconds it took to delete the older file and save the new one. What if the power went out?  What if there was an earthquake?  What if, God forbid, the kid who manned the lab rounded the corner and said in his flattest, Marvin-the-Paranoid-Android-impersonating monotone:

"The system is about to crash.  Save what you can."

Sadly, this was something he said often.  Happily, it never happened when I was in the midst of resaving my thesis, and miraculously I eventually (and when I say eventually, I mean e-ven-tu-al-ly) graduated.  And then I experienced far worse computer debacles, all of my own making, but that's for another blog.  Or not.  Not, I'm thinking.

Thanks for reading.  

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