The Dreaded Computer Update

I received an email Monday afternoon from our Chief Engineer regarding a security installation that was being done to all the computers in our building.

I didn’t pay much attention to it until I came in this morning, saw that my computer was running and there was a message that the update was only 27% complete.  In other words leave the program running and don’t use the computer.  Panic set it!

First I wondered how I would put together a daily sports report that I do for one of our other radio stations.  I pulled out a legal pad and then turned to my IPhone where I logged onto various sites to get the information needed.  Let’s be honest. how often do you actually write things on paper these days?  The answer for me is not often but I put down enough to get me through the recording of the 90-second sports report.

Next of course was the writing of this segment, the Hometown View.  I honestly did not know what today’s topic would be and I could not imagine writing it all down so I searched the recent archives and found something I could just re-record.

However by that time my computer screen showed the update was 68% complete and I figured it made sense to just wait a couple of minutes.

I started thinking about what life was like before computers.  When I first started at WOBM my main responsibility was doing two sports reports an hour during morning drive.  I would come in, access all the information from the wire services (I’ll explain some other time what they were) and then sit down at my typewriter and start banging away.

The first typewriter was a manual one and you had the change the ribbon and sometimes the keys would jam.  When I was upgraded to an electric one I thought it was like getting a Christmas present early.   I was actually the last person to use one and held out for as long as possible before making the switch to a desktop computer and of course later a laptop.

Oh look the update is now complete and I don’t have to re-use that segment from a year ago.  I wonder what I should do for this morning. Let me think about it.