fingers crossed

i had a big job interview today. i have my fingers crossed that i’ll get it. wish me luck. it was at this computer repair shop, the biggest one in town, the only one that can afford to have television commercials. i really need to start making $. i think maybe i might not get hired due to lack of experience, but my educational credentials and technical knowledge are quite good. i do admit that i also have a lack of technical certifications, but on thursday this week, i am taking the second and final part of the a+ certification test, and if all goes as planned, i will be an a+ certified computer technician, albeit one without a job. fixing computers is exactly what i want to do, because there is no way in hell anybody could outsource it, and more and more people in this country have more and more computers, yet less and less of them are able to keep their computers from crashing or getting broken or being overtaken by viruses or spyware. just yesterday, i read something quite depressing in the book i am using to study for the a+ software exam on thursday: apparently, for the last decade or so, hard drive manufacturers have been purposefully manufacturing hard drives in such a way that they will eventually stop working after a few years. you might be thinking, yes of course, isn’t everything made to be broken, but try and be more idealistic and less cynical for a change... why can’t we trust corporations to make products that last a long time? anyway, the companies that make hard disks have been designing them in such a way that they will inevitably stop working after a few years, and the only hard disks that do not have this design flaw are old hard disks that are less than 504 megabytes. any hard disk bigger than 504 megabytes has already been sabotaged by the people at the manufacturer who designed it to stop working. in their defense, the manufacturers did this for a very good reason: they knew how to design hard disks that could store more data but they would never be able to implement this design and have it be compatible with existing operating systems and bioses, unless they put in special computer chips to trick the operating systems and bioses into thinking of stuff the old way, while secretly doing things the new way. so they came up with ide (integrated drive electronics), as well as large and later lba modes of data transfer for these new drives bigger than 504 megabytes. since each manufacturer has its own special way of doing things, the hard drive controller, a little computer chip on the bottom of each hard drive, talks to the rest of the computer in a standardized way, and then it deals with the reality of where the data is really stored on the hard drive and how to access it. so anyway, each manufacturer does this differently, so you need special low-level-formatting utilities that are different for each manufacturer if you want to actually reformat the entire hard disk including the secret parts that microsoft windows and the rom bios don’t know about. but if you reformat the secret parts, although this can fix the problem that makes hard drives stop working after a few years by strengthening the magnetic fields in the secret areas, this can also totally screw things up and completely ruin hard drives. also, while you can do a high-level format as many times as you want and do no damage (you know, the kind of formatting dos, windows, or any other operating system does), a low-level format (the type special utilities from the manufacturer can do) is something you can only do a certain number of times before the drive is toast. so, what we have is sort of a paradox: if you never do a low-level format, the magnetic fields in the secret parts of your hard disk will get weaker over time until your hard drive controller loses track of where everything is. but, if you do a low-level format, you put significant wear and tear on your hard disk, you lose any and all data it holds, and you shorten its lifespan, although this is the only way to fix the problem of the weakening magnetic fields. in other words, hard drives are all doomed to destruction: they are designed to break, no matter what you do or don’t do. they are mortal and their lifespan is short, and this design flaw is 100% intentional on the part of the manufacturers. but i suppose they have to make money somehow... i just hope i will find a way to make money too, and i hope i won’t do it by ripping people off. as far as i know, the business i interviewed at does not go around ripping people off either, and they actually do a good job and don’t overcharge for it, which i know having been a past customer. that must be why they have such a good reputation and so many repeat customers. but there are plenty of other computer repair shops in town too, including at least one that i have gone to that had very unethical and nasty business practices towards its customers (including me and my mom). i am normally the type of person who would never sue anyone in a million years, but that one computer repair shop, i took a computer there a few years ago, and they kept it for a really long time before they bothered to do anything at all with it, and instead of fixing anything, they physically broke some of the electronic components off of the motherboard and the video card, and these components were rattling around loose inside the computer case... and then these clowns charged me for breaking it. silly naive me, i trusted them, and i paid them, and when i came home i was surprised to find those loose parts rattling around inside... and if you look at the better business bureau, this business has tons of complaints filed against them. anyway the place i interviewed at today is the exact opposite of that type of computer repair shop, as far as i know, which is why i would prefer to work at a shop of that caliber. i would hate to have to end up working for a bunch of crooks, but i might have no choice if i don’t get this job. i do still have some unanswered questions about hard drives, like i do not know if scsi hard drives are likewise doomed to failure the way ide hard drives are. probably. but, i suppose even the old under-504 megabyte hard drives are doomed to failure, simply because of the small size of the mechanical components and the ease of things getting out of place. even if people could solve the problem of the magnetic fields weakening, that problem would still remain, and hard drives would still be doomed to failure. but at least now i know the importance of backing up data. and maybe someday someone will invent a permanent way to securely store large amounts of digital data for many years. and maybe that person might be me.