electric mist

R.I.P.

I have been humoring, mollifying and begging the old computer to work for way longer than anyone familiar with computers would have deemed feasible, and for the last few months, it had been freezing up on me, forcing me to completely re-boot (and watch the blue screen of death as it scanned the disk and admonished me to not turn it off without properly shutting it down... and boy, I would have liked to have properly shut down whoever came up with that helpful little bon mot, particularly when the computer had frozen up for the third time in one busy deadline hellish day). Anyway. It had been freezing and mocking me, laughing and then rebooting (and occasionally taking two or three attempts to re-boot, depending on it it was PMSing or not)... and finally, I decided that it just wasn't worth the hassle. I hate buying a new computer because as soon as you do, it's nearly obsolete, which just galls me. Then I realized I had had this one since 1997. Yes, in computer years, that meant it was 3,458,345 years old and even I realize computers aren't meant to be pushed that far. I had upgraded the innards various times, so it was a P4, but a slow, sluggish one. There was some sort of RAM, probably the pre-historic Brontosaurus version of RAM with it's spastic little legs that couldn't do much (and were apparently fictional anyway), and there was more than the old standard of 128, but I honestly can't remember if it was more than 256. I had also added a CD burner, also so old it was persnickety and slow.

I found a new one online, discovered that I could apply some American Express reward points toward it and greatly reduce the price and get most of the bells and whistles I wanted for a reasonable amount. The new computer came in yesterday and was so easy to assemble and connect and absolutely everything was already on there and ready to go, I was floored. I put my new cordless mouse (from the old computer) on there, fully expecting to have to load the drivers, and voila, they were already there. How cool is that?

(You Mac people? Hush.)

I had been spending the last couple of days burning all of the relevant and necessary data onto CDs for transfer and had gotten everything of any real importance (all work data, all writing, all accounting, all family stuff like photos, etc.) when the old computer froze up again. Not a big deal, it's been doing this for nearly two years. I turn it off, re-boot it (because we're still going to use it in the new / under-construction spare offcie)... and it won't reboot. It'll go into "Safe Mode" (and is there anything that makes you feel less safe about computers than a greyish fuzzy screen with half of your icons missing that warns you that something is indescribeably wrong with your computer, so wrong that it's sort of half dead and it's going to think about whether or not it's going to die while you try to magically discern if it can be saved? It's kinda like asking a neurologist to fix your brain tumor while not allowing him anywhere near your head.) So anyway, "Safe Mode." Which it usually just did at least once or twice to annoy me, but this time, apparently it was seriously comtemplating suicide (I think it's just pissy because I don't have to give in to its tantrums any longer) and now it really won't re-boot. The very day I have a new computer and have everything actually loaded? I am not usually this lucky. I should buy lottery tickets this week.

The cat, however, is very NOT PLEASED with this whole flat-screen monitor thing. She spends most of her exhausting, difficult, hard-working days holding down her basket or holding down the monitor, in case it should have a sudden urge to drift skyward. She had become quite expert at draping herself across the entire thing, strategically placing her tail down the center of the screen at critical moments just so I could appreciate her strenuous labor. When I set up the new monitor, she walked up to it, walked behind it and stood, her little paws on the top of it, her little eyes peering over at me like, "Who said you could put my lounge chair on a DIET?" She walked around to the side and looked at the front... then the back... then the front again, as if trying to measure and see if she'd still fit. And let me just say right now that this cat takes after me in the math department, because she decided that her size FAT ass would fit on the new ultra-thin top, and she jumped.... going over and then down the back, with nary a thing to clutch onto and whoosh, over the rest of the desk and Wile. E. Coyoteed herself clean onto the floor. She waited a couple of hours and sat in front of the monitor and stared at it, moving her head as if assessing all the corners (they were still there) and the width (definitely bigger) and decided apparently that the first attempt was merely a bad joke and jumping from the front would be so much better, only she pushed off her normal amount and went clean over it again and whoosh, landed on the floor. She promptly walked around the desk and glared at me with a venomous stare. I am pretty sure she is hatching a revenge plot even as I write this.

Posted by toni at June 16, 2004 10:55 PM