You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Computer frustration.
I am so frustrated. My skin is itching. I feel like I have worms surfing in my veins.
I want to pull my hair out and scream.
I am at work, and all I want to do is go home and nurse a new computer to life.
Computers rule the world.
iphones, email, downloading videos and songs.
We expect to hit a button and get instant results.
Computers are great when they work.
Computers are the bane of existence, the elixir of angst, when they don’t.
I’ve been in computer hell for the last few weeks.
It’s been like banging my head with a technological hammer.
When your computer is slow, when it doesn’t work, you just feel helpless.
You want someone from the geek squad to ring your bell and hug you.
I want to put a big band aid on my lap top and drag it to the I.T. department at work.
“Here nerds,” I want to say. “Rock my baby. Bring him back to life. Help me Obi Won. You are my only hope!”
For me, all this stress starts with a 10 year old lap top. I’m keeping the damn thing alive on an electrical ventilator.
I have to talk nicely to it, and massage it just so.
I have to check the outlet and make sure it’s compatible and humming with amps. I have to make sure that the connection is clean and on. I have to talk to the little obilisque of sagacious knowledge and coax it out of its sleep mode and into the light.
My little computer is like an old man who has to cough up phloem in the morning, to clear his throat to drag in a deep breath.
Hey old man, get up. Do something. Pop a Viagra, rub some cream on your key pad.
let’s go.
I have to Defrag the C drive almost every day.
It’s like clearing out the old man’s arteries with a soup spoon.
The hard drive has an operating system sponsored by AARP.
It is slow and clunky, but works just enough to keep me from throwing it against the wall or going to best buy.
I bought a writing program. It was pricey. I down loaded it onto the old man.
The program was just incompatible. No matter what I tried, no matter how much Viagra I pumped into the old man, he just couldn’t get it up.
I called the company and they laughed at me.
How old is that thing? she spewed.
“Call Microsoft tech support,” she laughed. “Vista? Isn’t that an over look at the Grand Canyon?”
Sorry old man. I gotta get me a new sugar daddy.
Tuesday the new HP Envy 15 PC arrives.
I’m stoked.
I take it out of the box.
The unit is light, like a super model wearing cuff links for a swim suit.
The case is gun-metal grey and sleek like a Ferrari.
The cover is smooth like polished granite from the Michelangelo Collection. It feels on my finger tips like chocolate tastes on my tonsils.
I open the cover and hit the power button.
It wakes up with a whiz, like a kitten with a dual core processor.
It asks me for my email. It asks me for my wi-fi code. It seems to know what I want before I do.
Go girl. Take me. Make me your technological bitch.
Then it says loading apps. Almost done. Like a super model putting on a lot of make up, this computerized hottie is taking her sweet ass time.
2 hours later, the screen is blue, a circle is spinning and it is still loading apps.
I check the instructions and I’m frustrated as hell.
Nowhere does it say I will have to power down in the middle of a boot up for the 1st time.
It feels wrong. But 2 hours? A blue screen and spinning circle?
Come on you super model wench. What gives.
It seems wrong, very wrong.
I turn the unit off.
I turn the unit on.
Like a real super model, she just stares at me and says “is that all you got old man.”
She asks me for a password.
What password is that?
And so it goes.
The new computer with the intel good looks and 8.1 OS is laughing at me, teasing me, taunting me.
You know you want me, she winks through her little blue fluctuating hour-glass eye. But can you really handle me?
I’m frustrated. Computers are a secret society of dots and dashes. A binary code of clandestine internet inebriation.
I don’t even know what that means.
At the end of this writing, the little HP Envy with the sleek cover is sitting on the counter trying to wake up, trying to install itself, to come to life for the 1st time.
But I am dreading it.
I am away and fretting and checking you tube for clues how to start a new computer.
I’ve done this before. I am not a babe in the technological woods.
And that is my point. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
It is a 500 dollar whore who comes to my hotel room and reads me stories from the Canterbury Tales.
I go to bed. The little blue light is bathing the living room in a cloak of what the hell is going on here.
I wake up.
I rush downstairs.
The OS has figured itself out.
The screen is awake, alive, alert.
Computers are wonderful.
The keys type like little tiger paws prancing through the jungle.
The touchscreen is so responsive you need a condom to handle it.
The connection speed is faster than a teenage boy on his prom.
I’m in bliss. I am connected. The writing program is installed.
Facebook is stupider than ever with your new profile pages and kid updates.
If I was into Asian Porn, I bet I could get it simply by touching the screen and asking this super model for it.
But I won’t.
I’m a blue-collar, hard hat wearing computer guy and this new super model is just gonna have to deal with the fact that I’m from 1980 and we didn’t have the internet in 1980.
So cheat on me if you must, but just be there for me when I need you.
Thanks Super Model Computer.
Life’s Crazy™