Whew from bytes

By Ed Piper

I've been through megabyte hell.

Since the night I returned from baseball Spring Training in Phoenix March 8 (see earlier entries), my computer has--we think--been going through its own cyber nervous breakdown.

From working the best it has ever worked in the three previous months, my desktop began a decline that seemed the result of the regular junk you accumulate through use on the Internet and with applications over time.

Coming back to the coastal Promised Land from the inland desert, I was filled with hope and joy and the expectation of further sports journaling following a relaxing, baseball-filled six days in the Valley of the Sun.

I attended six major league Spring Training games at six different ballparks in five days, plus this year I added a few morning visits to view team workouts at three of the other four parks in the greater Phoenix/Tempe area. That makes touchdowns in nine of the 10 parks, and spectatorship of almost all the 15 major league clubs (at Tempe Diablo, no players were outside practicing--I heard the familiar rap of bats on balls, I think--possibly pitchers getting their bullpens in--inside an Angels workout facility not open to the public).

With all that hope that springs eternal with the start of the baseball season, instead I was greeted by a grumpy cyber station back home that quickly discouraged my photo processing and blogging about our beloved La Jolla High sports activities.

I kept taking photos at LJHS games--that's what I love to do, with nearly 1,000 events chronicled on my photo website (ljhssportsbyedpiper.shutterfly.com)--but I was struggling to load them and put them on the website, which spans nine school years of Viking action in all sports.

(This is my 12th year overall taking action photos of La Jolla High sports teams, since my granddaughter Alexis matriculated as a freshman in 2004.)

How quickly the well of words dries up when the inspiration is stifled by mechanical difficulties.

I'm amazed I can write these words, in a basic flow.

For four and a half weeks, I have labored to tap keys with words to match the photos.

All this time, until the last couple of days, I have thought the problem with my computer was a bad installation. I'm staying with Windows 7 as my operating system, because it is a good one. I started trying to reinstall it repeatedly in an effort to overcome the frequent freezes and shutdowns and blue screens of death, to no avail.

To the rescue came my good computer-guy friend. We think it's the hard drive, but we are taking our time to work through the different components and isolate the problem so we aren't replacing something that may be working fine after all.

It was almost fitting that La Jolla's baseball game at Petco Park against Point Loma was rained out Fri., April 8. Things were going wrong, and here was another example. I'm not happy the Vikings didn't get to play on the Padres' diamond. I was disappointed. Hopefully, they get it rescheduled. Coach Gary Frank said they're waiting on word from the Padres' groundskeeper.

The lesson I've been reminded of through this frustrating stretch is that difficulties may come, more than one at a time. You can't control circumstances. The computer was crashing, and meanwhile I was madly collecting all the documents I needed to apply to substitute teach in some local districts. That took a bunch of time and energy. I was also adjusting to a new sleep device.

It's a good life, with lots of blessings. You can be grateful, not freak out more than necessary, and just keep going. Hug those around you. Tell them you love them.

The thing I want to do now is process photos I took on my handy little point-and-shoot at some of those nine ballparks during Spring Training, and load them on my new smartphone. (I lost all the images I took on my phone from behind backstops at Camelback Ranch, the Dodgers' facility, and elsewhere when I reset my previous smartphone without having my photos backed up. Oh, well.)

Those photos will be a bright reminder of a season of expectation, of a refreshed outlook, of hope before any team lost any games that counted. That's what Spring Training represents to me.

Now, as we move toward working through the steps and being sure that the hard drive--I've never had one go bad on me--is the root of the problem, I can go back to the dual things I enjoy so much: clicking photos of your kids on the sports fields of La Jolla High, and adding a few words of spice on my blog about the poetry, the art, the synergy of safe, healthy athletic competition among our young people, who are our leaders of the future.

This is their time. This is the time they can enjoy, their only four years of interscholastic sports for the vast majority of them.

Spring. bring it on.