The good news is that my computer was recently updated!  Everyone likes updates, right?

The bad news is that my development environment which consists of at least two DOS prompts running processes, my IDE, email client, browser with many tabs, draft emails I’ve left open as reminders to finish them and a handful of Windows Explorer windows… is gone!  Poof!

That Untitled-1 Word document or PowerPoint presentation you were working on?  Gone!

That Adobe Illustrator project you started right before you left, and had some creative inspiration on?  Gone!

This is infuriatingly computer-first behaviour.  Behaviour that says that we as people, our needs (a persistent workspace, an understanding that things will be where I left them) are less important than the needs of the computer (to be running the latest Windows code).

The chance that my computer, on a corporate network, is going to be affected WHILE IDLE (i.e. it cannot wait for me to return and click, “Yes, Reboot!”) is so staggeringly low that I’m surprised this is the default, recommended configuration of XP.  One way to know I’m “at work” is the fact that my machine is part of a Windows domain.  “Nobody” (quotes signifying not enough people to consider the average case) is hooked up to a domain from their home PC.

Pardon me, while I write an email to myself at work as a reminder to disable auto-update X-|