50+ Lifestyles

Defrag and Reboot

By David W. Deuth, CFSP
President, Weerts Funeral Home

Sooner or later, it had to happen:I’m now in the final year of my forties. While for today, I don’t think I’ll have any reservations or regrets when I eclipse fifty next year, I am content to acknowledge readily that I may or may not feel differently when I actually get  there.

A few things have caught up with me that I may as well admit, the most evident of which is my need for “focals.” Three of them, in fact. One little strip just for the computer; a larger, lower one just for reading. The top is, I guess, just for everything else.While they do help with that for which each is intended, I will sheepishly admit that I’m still getting used to their effect upon traveling the stairs. Either direction.

The hair has ripened to gray in areas. Evident more at some times than others (most notably so when it’s time for trimming), this is an area for which I have little time to fret. I’m not a Grecian Formula kind of guy and, I guess, I’m mostly grateful that there’s still something up there. Mostly…

Perhaps my greatest challenge is attributable to both the fact that I’m another year older and that we’ve been in the Quad Cities for nearly 15 years now. This challenge, of course, is my internal Rolodex. This internal hard drive of my brain has decidedly limited space and does not seem to have all that is required to keep up with current demands. Upgrades, I’m finding, are not easy to come by for my particular model. For the first few years we  lived here, the hard drive seemed to function pretty well. When one partition of my hard drive saw someone’s face, the internal Rolodex partition  could match a name to that face. Recall was pretty quick and so was the connecting of the dots, as it were.

As more and more data has been added to the hard drive over the years, however, the internal memory has bogged down and functions notably slower. The processor speed, which I had previously considered to be among the best available, is becoming dated . . . and now the partition that recognizes faces seems to perform significantly better than the partition that has to come up with the names. Connecting these dots often returns internal errors; rebooting is occasionally necessary and often embarrassing. If the save button is not pressed before rebooting is required, any new data – and some older data – is lost.

After checking under the hood, I’ve been informed that there are no more slots for additional RAM on my motherboard. (Linda says that at least some of the hard drive and way too much of the RAM is used for certain non-essential information, such as songs, artists and lyrics of songs from the ‘70s. I’ve let her enjoy that opinion…there was some really great music in the ‘70s and just I can’t bring myself to drag it to the recycle bin.)

Defragmenting the hard drive, while quite effective on my computer, seems a bit more risky for my internal hard drive. I’m not exactly certain what would be involved, but I’m pretty sure that it would have to be something more than a few Sudoku and a couple rounds of Double Jeopardy. I am considering possibly digressing to flashcards. As I defrag and reboot my way to 50, I must admit that now more than ever, I’m finding new angles on what it might mean to… Remember Well.

David W. Deuth, CFSP, is a funeral director and owns Weerts Funeral Home in Davenport and RiverBend Cremation and Quad Cities Pet Cremation in Bettendorf. He can be reached at (563) 424.7055 or by email at Dave@WeertsFH.com.