This summer, I suffered a computer crash. Luckily, I saw it coming — it would have problems, temporarily freeze, then lock up and crash. Despite my efforts to clean out unnecessary programs, processes, and detritus, the problems kept getting worse, and I knew that I’d ultimately have to erase everything and start over.
So, I did what anyone would do. I backed up everything I thought I’d need, made lists of the stuff I’d want to reinstall, and went ahead with the erase job.
Two things happened:
- I erased everything and reinstalled just the OS, only to find my problems remained. It turned out to be faulty RAM that I had installed six months before. Yes, I ran hardware tests, but they didn’t show any problems. Major thanks go out to Mariam, the angel on the Mac forum who saved my bacon. Ever since getting my new RAM, everything has run perfectly, like a Mac does when you don’t put junk in the engine.
- I realized that the way I had been working, managing information, and handling my digital life was way outta whack. I had backups, I’d worked efficiently, I’d streamlined my processes… yet until I had to start completely over from scratch, I had no idea how much fat there was still was left to trim.
