I think I managed to save my laptop.
Folks, nobody has to tell me I’m not the greatest tech support guy ever. However, I’ve done it long enough to realize that if you have one kind of failure, you can usually figure it out. If you have two overlapping failures, you may never figure it out.
So while testing Debian 9 on the laptop, I suddenly found that Opera refused to run because I no longer had proper access to my own profile. This came after using it several times. Something changing permissions inside your own Home directory is virtually always a matter above my head. That is, I know that it happens, and I’ve tried to understand why, but I admit that it involves stuff over my head. At any rate, I had enough complaints with other issues to feel that Debian 9 wasn’t ready for prime time.
I note in passing that the release managers found some issues with the ISO files and have already pushed out another set, so I was justified in my assessment.
I tried to reinstall Xubuntu, but it failed to write some files to the disk. That smells like a hard drive failure, so I swapped out the drive with the old one. Same error again. That caused me to believe that either the RAM was bad or something else that controls how the installer writes to the disk. I gave up at that point, and posted it on the blog.
Over the next 24 hours or so, it began to trickle into my consciousness that I should at least run the onboard diagnostics and see if it tells me anything. Last night I did that, to include that hour-long RAM testing. It found no problems; even the hard drive was found healthy.
Maybe I should test Linux Mint? Then I remembered that my USB disk burner had fallen on the floor at least once in the past and decided not to trust it again. I burned the latest ISO on another machine and decided to give it one last shot. Lo and behold it installed just fine. So I’m running it through the paces and trying to see if this will work.
My point here is that you can’t fail trusting your heart. I’ve already admitted that I couldn’t be half so useful at tech support if I didn’t first test with my convictions what I should or shouldn’t do. Computers, like anything else in Creation, will talk to us on the heart’s wavelength, though it won’t be the same as natural wild life. At least, they talk to me. At the very minimum, we should test our convictions to see if it’s worth the trouble in the first place. This time, it seems it was.
Granted, your calling from God may not have anything to do with computers. However, everyone whose heart is awakened does have a mission, and your heart knows that mission. You’ll be the heart-led servant of God in that calling.
