Well, he finally did it.
Echidna boy broke one of our rules for his continued use of the computer. Fortunately, not the one involving the FBI.
He downloaded Blender, an open source 3D graphics software package. He was teaching himself 3D graphic design. All well and good.
He did a few small pictures. We should have known something was going on because he started to complain that the machine was getting slow.
He then decided to do a larger -- screen-saver sized -- picture. And ended up overwriting the entire hard drive, including the operating system. He may also have overheated the CPU, we don't know yet. And he cannot find the proper OS X release to reboot the system. Apparently, a trip to the Apple Store is in order.
I am terribly conflicted. On the one hand, he fried the computer. This a serious inconvenience. (Not for me, I write on my laptop anyway, but for his brothers.)
On the other hand ... he was trying something new, and creative. He was showing initiative. He was being curious. All of these are things I am extremely proud of him for. (I've actually told him this.)
On the first hand, he still trashed the computer. We have a large, sleek paperweight on our counter. This is a very bad thing. (I have also told him this, and that he'd better not do it again.)
So, as I said... conflicted. When people said parenting teenagers was hard, I never expected this.
I refer to those as "f*cking learning experiences". Hopefully he has learned not to do that again, and will find new and exciting ways to mess up...
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, I'm not aware of any way to do that to a computer using Blender (which I have used), so I must admit that I'm wearing my "Something is very fishy here," face.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think if I were in your position, I would want to know if there was any way he could have known that was a possible outcome. If not... It's a little like saying a dependant driver isn't allowed to drive ever again because the car blew a flat or had the transmission die while they were using it. There is a difference between doing something dangerous and causing harm and just happening to be the one at the wheel when random chance or an unrelated problem kicked in. Certainly if the CPU overheated because Blender was rendering, that's a hardware fault of your computer, not anything he did.