System updates and glitches
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
This Friday, I was out on a construction site doing field measurements. On a typical measurement day, you will generate 10-20 project files in your sound level meter. Needless to say, if you should lose the SD card, or the device, it would be an economical disaster and it cannot be allowed to occur. Therefore, I always upload all measurements to our off-site file server before I pack up and leave at the end of the day. The latest generation of sound analyzers are wonderful, with WiFi connection for direct transfer. If they work, that is. I was quite annoyed when I was just supposed to do a 10-20 Mb file transfer and it took me the better part of an hour. I ended up pulling the Micro SD card from the device and uploading it the old-fashioned way with an adapter and card reader. However, that is quite dangerous as those SD cards are very small and easy to lose.
The list goes on. My favorite system update with bad timing was last year when I had scheduled an online tutoring activity on Zoom with about 40 students. I made sure to test and connect every piece of equipment the night before and it worked like a charm. The next day, I was almost an hour ahead of schedule and fired up my system to make sure there would be no issues. Then, my HP Elite X2 decided it was time to conduct a major system update with BIOS flash. You cannot skip it; it just begins the update process when it feels like it. Even if you are standing in front of an audience. And this is a time-consuming process. I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry as I watched the counters on the clock come closer and closer to 13:00 when the lecture starts. I couldn’t even start Zoom and tell my students that I had technical issues. What was probably around 20 minutes felt like an eternity, and around 12:59 Windows finally started booting. The equipment I had test run the night before, did not work at all. But at least the students had a teacher in the call.
Another classic situation that I have lost count of how many times it has happened to me, is whenever I fancy a quick little gaming session. I might have 30 minutes to spare in the evening and I think how nice it would be to just game a bit on my PC. It feels like almost every time, if it isn’t windows that wants to do some update, it is the game on Steam. And you can’t run them until you’ve updated them. Yesterday was just like that. When every update was finally finished, about 29 minutes later, I had 1 minute of quality time remaining to do some gaming. Sigh… Microsoft Flight Simulator is the worst one of them all. The updates are enormous and when you are on a slow Internet connection like me, the only way to download them is to let the process run throughout the night, and then you can play the next day.
It sure feels as if this problem is just getting worse every year. The updates have an uncanny ability to come at the worst possible time. At least Microsoft did some adjustments so that they try to figure out when the chance is high that your workflow won’t be affected – night-time – so it’s somewhat better now. I remember when these auto update procedures were new, and no such regulations were in place. Frustrated teachers and lecturers had to watch the slow ticking progress bar in front of their audience. And with technology, it is also fascinating to me how it always seems to malfunction when you really need it. Even if you connect and test-run everything the night before. Using a computer almost feels like playing Russian roulette. With my gaming computer it is hopeless. It mostly collects dust and then 1-2 times per week I want to fire it up for a quick session. And the chances that you’ll need an update are thus very high. I guess the only way to be sure is to never turn your device off, so that it can run it’s constant update processes during night-time.