So come this Sunday, I have been without my Dell desktop,
and subsequently practical use of email, for three weeks. My tech called me yesterday to inform me the
old Dell was shot and I needed a new computer.
I’m going in on Monday to lay out the specs and likely have him build me
my new desktop. I probably won’t have
more details as to when I’ll be back online until after Monday’s meeting. Meanwhile the CFP is consuming all my
time. This has been so much more
difficult that I had been lead to believe but I am nonetheless loving it and
looking forward to great things. This
posting is an update on both the computer issues and the constitution of this
introductory CFP course.
Though I’ve had all my data files
transferred to my 2TB Seagate external drive for a number of months now, (so
forever after now I need only unplug the Seagate and plug it into any other
computer. My files are forever in one
place,) it took more than a week to get my programs inventoried and the
essential ones transferred over to the Toshiba laptop. I knew from the start that the most
problematic task would be transferring my AOL desktop and the tens of thousands
of emails and hundreds of bookmarked websites I have stored there since
1990. The main reason I knew it would be
problematic is because the documentation on how to transfer files is simply
wrong so it was a lot of hit-and-miss.
Now that I have it figured out, I am making a video for all AOL users
for YouTube, not only on the transfer process but also on why the AOL desktop
is the only ISP that fulfills my requirements.
There
was another week of navigating all the headaches involved in the transition
from Windows Vista (on the Dell) to Windows 7 on the Toshiba. I don’t understand at all why this would
happen, but in virtually all my files, the fonts got changed, the line spacing,
the formatting and many other things that really should have been set in stone
once the file was created but in reality got completely modified when I changed
to another computer and another operating system. Then it was almost a two-day operation to
actually disassemble the Dell desktop so I could take it into the shop. I had it all done once, then realized there
was still one more set of files that needed to be transferred to the master
hard drive since nothing was working right since some critical files were
missing. This is what makes computers so
frustrating – you have to be your own tech sometimes to do just about anything. Who has the time for that?
So, one
week ago yesterday, I took the Dell tower over to John Horger’s shop in
Commerce. John is a computer wizard and my
fellow Cable Board commissioner for Keego and everyone on the commission uses
him for their personal tech work. He
also has the contract to do all the tech work for our cable TV station. My objective was to simply have him install
Windows 7 on the Dell so that I could then access the 64-bit processing power
(Vista could only use 16 of the 64 on my motherboard) and expand my memory from
the 3 GB I had to the 8 GB that it could handle with Windows 7. This entire operation was estimated to run
about $200; not bad to quadruple my power and triple my memory, the two missing
elements to make video editing go much more smoothly.
Yesterday,
John called me with the verdict. My
motherboard was fried. There was nothing
to be done except replace the computer.
As the Dell is nearly ten years old, I was actually relieved. Having spent some time on the Dell website
this week, I’ve actually started looking forward to new instead of upgrade and
was almost hoping that it would be a dire verdict.
John
has offered to build me a new desktop customized for video editing and it is
sounding like an attractive option to buy a computer from a company that is in
the neighborhood and readily available to supply support. This became particularly evident to me
several years ago while I was still in Orchard Lake and I got a virus that no
one else had a clue how to fix. I was
told by every shop that my hard drive was fried and my data lost. (I did have a backup so this was no huge
concern though it would have been a considerable inconvenience. I do believe religiously in backing up and
have the Dell programmed to do one automatically every morning at 5 a.m. I’m really the only person I know who does
daily backups. It’s quite easy so why
nobody does is also quite a mystery to me.)
The
short answer to the problem was to take the Dell to John who used Dept of
Defense virus attackers to ID the bugger and kill it while saving my files. I was informed it was a very rare virus so
none of the usual consumer virus programs (including the Mac) would have
spotted it or prevented it. But he was
able to so I’ve always known that when the time came he’d be doing my next
computer.
After
my latest (and by far most difficult) CFP exam on Wednesday, I spent quite a
bit of time on the Dell website identifying two different XPS desktops that I
think will be quite suitable for video editing.
I need now only take these specs to John on Monday and we will figure
out the optimal setup and he will price out and build a new computer for
me.
So I
will be without a computer for very likely a minimum of one more week, but will
have more details about this come Monday afternoon. I have been grinding along with this old Dell
for so long (a couple years now that it’s been giving me serious trouble) that
I am quite excited about this. I was
astonished to learn that the motherboard was fried. It made me wonder how I was able to use the
computer at all. My complaint is that it
would often take forever to reboot, 15 to 20 minutes in most cases, and would
crash quite frequently, sometimes two or three times in a single day. Even more frustrating than that was the fact
things could be going along so smoothly and then suddenly, with the snap of a
finger, mouse clicks that are typically instant now took anywhere from 30
seconds to a couple minutes to respond.
I could only fix this by rebooting and waiting another 15 or 20 minutes
to use the computer again. I would have
blamed the Dell and had this attended to sooner except that I’ve had this same
problem on every computer I’ve ever owned.
John
was certainly of the opinion that my very damaged motherboard was likely the
reason I was getting such poor performance.
It reminded me of the day 9 years ago that I was diagnosed with the
sleep apnea. The test results showed
that I had not fallen asleep in 40 years.
I asked the doctor, “Forty years!
Shouldn’t I be dead?” Well, no he
said, the human body is quite adaptable so it simply adjusted. However, it did
provide quite the reasonable explanation as to why I’ve been so sickly and
fatigued all my life, and particularly in so much pain the past 20 years. He must have been on to something because my
symptoms and quality of life vastly improved after I started the C/PAP therapy,
though it did take about four years to reverse the 40 years of damage. That’s what crossed my mind when John gave me
the news about the Dell. How was it even
operating? Well, computers must be
adaptable too, and I am certainly looking forward to having a top notch desktop
again. Using a laptop as the main
computer is certainly a big pain. It is
so much slower, so awkward, and the screen is so much more difficult to see and
read. So Monday afternoon, I get to be a kid in a candy store again when I go to his shop and lay out the specs for
the new computer.
***********************************
I had another kid-in-a-candy-store
experience two weeks ago when Paul and I went to the annual Steinway used piano
sale at U of M. We spent a couple hours
there as I played my entire Guild repertoire on about ten different Steinway
grand pianos plus some Grinnells (which are still being built right here in
Detroit.) I am really quite happy with
my Ritmuller but must admit that the Steinway delivers a grandiose lushness,
subtlety and clarity that I cannot find in any other piano.
Several years ago, Tim Hoy, the
President of Steinway-Detroit showed me my dream piano – a Steinway M (the same
piano John Lennon played) with a gorgeous glazed mahogany veneer, a $60,000
piano that had been at U of M for one year and was on sale that clearance
weekend for $30,000 but that he agreed to sell to me that day for $20,000. But several years ago, there was no way I
could justify going $20,000 into debt for something as frivolous as a new
piano, even if it was the deal of a lifetime.
I do wish I had had the money then as I don’t think I’ll ever find that
deal again.
Nevertheless, the Steinway M
remains my dream piano if I can find one with the exact same veneer. As usual, Tim was there to greet us when we
arrived at U of M and remembered what I was looking for but reminded me that
these are after all used pianos and it was not likely that we’d ever find that
particular veneer in a used piano again.
I’d have to come to the store in Commerce and order a new one. In a few years, I may be in a position to do
just that. In any event, I have no
intention of upgrading to my dream piano until I am an advanced piano student. The Steinway is so subtle that it is unlikely
I will be able to bring out its lush sounds until my skill levels are
significantly elevated. That’s going to
be at least several more years anyway. I
have now completed 10 of the 21 Piano Guild courses, the 21st being
the equivalent of a master’s degree at any top conservatory. When I’ve completed 14, I’ll start shopping
for my dream Steinway.
*****************************************
Then there’s that other dream out
in California – The Dream Factory, aka Hollywood – that I will also be
continuing to pursue, the latest being the immense feelings of accomplishment I
continue to enjoy with the completion of Ash Wednesday. For the first time in a very long time, I now
feel like a legitimate writer. I have shared
this third draft with a few trusted industry professionals as well as few of
the “general public” to try to get an average audience reaction. The industry feedback has been great for
pointing out problem areas I’d never even considered, and for demonstrating
loud and clear that I’ve created something with a lot of potential. The “general public” comments have been
nothing short of glowing, the most common comment being that “it’s a real
page-turner, couldn't put it down!” Any doubts I may have had
of being able to keep a reader’s interest have now been dispatched, and that’s
saying a lot for a script that’s 30 pages too long.
Everyone seems agreed on the
strengths of the script, that I have constructed a compelling story (by some
descriptions a “nail biter”) but there is little agreement on the weaknesses,
the more serious critiques each pointing to something entirely different that
needs fixing. I am hoping my mentor Tim
Jeffrey will be able to shed some light on these issues and help me define a
polish strategy. Meanwhile, as I pointed
out in my last post, though I will be continuing to try to enter the industry
as best as time and resources permit, I am really quite happy with the current
process. The writing alone is reward in
itself and I am perfectly content just to keep creating even if nothing comes
of it. I am taking some time off from
Ash Wednesday to write treatments for other scripts and am currently working on
five new stories, then decide which will be my next project. In any event, like the piano, I will be
continuing for years this pursuit of the fine-tuning of my writing skills.
***************************************
During
those years, I am also going to be building my new career as a CFP and that
brings us to the final item in my update.
This introductory/mentor course that has been consuming all my time
since mid-May has been many times more difficult than I was lead to
believe. I am under threat of expulsion
every time I go in as Mr. Tom Rabaut, my mentor, made clear in the first
meeting that there would be an exam at the beginning of each meeting in order
to evaluate that we have made a very serious attempt to read and master the
material. Fail one exam –
probation. Fail two exams –
expulsion.
Expulsion would have grave
consequences since this course is a prerequisite for doing the internship and
the internship is now a prerequisite for admission to the one-year core program
that begins next February. If I can
satisfy Tom as to my commitment, he will be setting me up with an optimal
internship which should lead to a terrific fulltime job. If not, then the only other recourse would be
to find a job entirely on my own, a job that obviously would not be nearly as
high quality as the one he will be finding for me, and do the job for two years
before I could reapply to Oakland University.
This is
all fine and good. It is extraordinarily
rigorous, more rigorous than grad school even, but if the objective is to find
out whether you have a passion for the stuff or, conversely, discover yourself
screaming, “Let me the hell out of here,” then it will be quite worth the
effort. So far Tom seems very pleased
with me. He’s even stopped giving me my
test scores which indicates to me that he is sufficiently happy that he’s not
even counting the exams anymore for me.
He is being so nice to me that I am hoping that he offers me the
internship with his firm.
Still,
it is extremely arduous and stressful having this axe hanging over me every
time I go. The exam questions are taken
directly from the national exam that we will be sitting for in two years after
completing the entire program. These
exams are not at all unlike the bar exam, the questions being so terribly
detailed that you almost need to have memorized the book to answer them
correctly. The sheer volume of this very
technical material is horrendous. We are
expected to read and master between 200 and 300 pages of the books for each
class session and then take the exam before we even talk about the content. I was told at the beginning that I could
expect to spend about three hours preparing for each class session. No, it’s more like 30 hours. Yes, 3 hours is about sufficient for a single
pass over the material, but there is no way to pass the exam on just a single
reading. I read the material two or
three times over before I feel competent to even attempt the practice
exams. The practice exams have between
150 to 200 questions.
The
questions on the actual exams come directly from the practice sets but we get
10 questions on the exam so you have to thoroughly master all 200 since there’s
no way of knowing which are going to be amongst the ten. And the questions are often deliberately
worded deceptively, not to mention as I’ve said that these questions are the
same as the ones on the actual national exam we take in two years. Given that reality, I’ve questioned whether
it’s fair to have these kinds of questions in an intro course. Tom’s explanation is that the entire two year
program will have these same questions because they want us getting used to the
complexity of the questions that are on the final. It does certainly explain why the national
exam has only a 40 percent pass rate.
Given
the fact that the actual exam is taken right from the practice questions, up
until this week I’ve felt that passing the exams was then the simple (if
arduous) process of just memorizing the answers to all 200 questions. The exam this past Wednesday nullified that
assumption. I noticed that Tom, for the
first time, changed the wording on several questions just ever so slightly so
that the answer would be different. In
other words, rote memorization would no longer get you to the finish line. You actually had to understand the material
to understand why the answer had changed.
I joked with Tom after the exam that I had noticed that he had cleverly
changed a word here and there so that the answers would be different from the
practice test. Now you have to actually
understand the stuff. Yes, he said,
that’s what he did. Yes, he said, his
intention was to see if we actually understand the stuff.
**********************************************
So it
is very tough, the toughest course I’ve ever taken in my life not only because
of the sheer volume and difficulty of the content but because failure will result
in severely dire consequences. That’s a
lot of pressure to deal with. But he
does seem quite pleased with me so I’m not particularly concerned. On Wednesday, he gave me particularly good
news when he informed me we have only two more exams. Since he certainly should not be expelling me
at the last session, I’m thinking the worst is over and I am no longer
vulnerable. He also gave me an
encouraging sign three weeks ago when he assigned me an extra book to read that
he hasn’t given the other students. My
interpretation of this is that he will be using our discussion of this extra
book to further evaluate me for what I hope will be a very special
internship.
This
intro course concludes at the end of September.
The internship will begin in either October or November. I’m assuming the intensity of the program
will become quite a bit less severe after this intro course. I am very much looking forward to having more
time to cover this material, to actually be taking the exams AFTER we’ve
covered the material rather than before, and to actually be taking exams
without the threat of dire consequences if the grade is not quite up to
par. I am certainly expecting that the
amount of time required to prepare for each class will be greatly reduced once
the core program starts next February.
To just
briefly illustrate the point, the exam this past Wednesday covered eight
chapters of the textbooks including the topics of insurance, economics, and
investments. All of that was covered in
190 pages in two weeks and 150 practice questions for a ten minute exam. In the actual core program, each one of these
topics will be a separate two month course involving a four-hour session each
week. In other words, just in the past
two weeks, we have squeezed in three entire courses that will be covered over a
six month period involving 90 classroom hours, instead of a two-week course and
a 30 minute class session. This has been
typical.
Once
again, I will reiterate that I very much believe that this is being done by
design, that the sheer volume and difficulty of so much material in such a
brief time is being given to us intentionally with the purpose of finding out
whether we come away saying “this stuff is great, can’t get enough of it,” or “you
guys are all nuts, let me the hell out of here!” So far my reaction is that this stuff really
is enjoyable and I can’t get enough of it.
Tom seems to feel the same way about me.
But it does very much feel like they’re squeezing the entire two year
course into as many months. So I am very
much looking forward to actually taking two years to digest and master all this
very valuable information.
In
another four weeks, I should certainly have a much more specific idea of where
I stand and what’s in store for me. By
that time I should also be up and running on my new computer. Stay tuned.
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