I decided to pay a visit to an old friend that I hadn’t seen in a while. His son answered the door. Apparently he had fallen down the stairs some weeks back and is now in a home in the north of the county. He also has dementia.
On my very first day in my career as a professional tester I was given a tour of the offices by a lady who introduced me to Richard as someone who would act as my mentor. I was given a seat next to him and told that he would show me the ropes. She then left and I turned to Richard and asked “So what are we doing?”. “I haven’t a f’ing clue” was his response. We’ve been friends ever since.
Many years later after he retired we would meet up regularly for beers and chat about anything and everything. Others would join us over the years and invariably move on. Then around several years ago he would arrange beers and wouldn’t turn up. This happened several times. Each time he claimed to have just forgotten. Months later I saw him walking his dog. I said hi and he asked who I was. Then he appeared to recognise me and claimed to have been pulling my leg, but I wasn’t really sure.
We lost touch again and I was passing his house so figured I’d call in. I was saddened to hear that he was now in a home and that he had dementia, but in the back of my mind I had guessed what was happening. His son assured me though that I should visit and he was confident he would know who I was having known me for so long.
An hour later I pulled out my phone and looked up the home and decided to call. A lady confirmed he was there and said she’d put him on. I heard her mention my name to him and him replying “I can’t think who that is” in a frail voice. He came on the phone and after several references to past events he knew who I was and we were chatting like old friends. But every so often he would start to mumble and get distracted by something. He would then forget who he was talking to and I’d have to trigger some memories to bring him back, but briefly, he came and went throughout the conversation.
Afterwards I just sat and thought about how sad it was to lose yourself like that. It’s clear that the Richard I knew is slowly fading. I’m not even sure he’ll remember me if he saw me in person. I guess I’ll find out as I plan on paying him a visit soon.
Tag: memory
The life of an SD card
I’ve purchased many SD cards and USB sticks over the years and I have a few thoughts on them.
You can shop around, do your research, and then buy cheap or expensive ones but regardless of what you buy you will still usually encounter the following:
1. The specs may not be as advertised. It may be slower than advertised for example.
2. It may be a fake. Even if bought from a legitimate source it may still be fake as there are so many of them about.
3. It may just die for no reason and you can’t return it if it has your private data on it so you are out of pocket.
4. It may need resizing on one OS and then fixing for use with another. Especially if being used to install or upgrade an OS like Linux.
5. It may corrupt your data, especially large files.
Smaller cards, especially microSD cards, die quickly in Kindle devices and dashcams. It’s something about how they are mounted and continually written to that just causes them to expire.
I go through SD cards and memory sticks fairly often. I have yet to find a make or model that can last years.