My Inner (Or Not-So-Inner) Geek

I feel:: like I either need Starbucks or some ice cream. OO! Starbucks ice cream! I think I'm pre-menstrual, just fyi.

Ok. Y'all remember when I posted about getting a new computer? Well, right after that in a rush of emotion, I called my mom and asked her if she would like to have my old one. It's not really that "old". I bought it in 2001, but I guess as computer technology goes, it's ancient. At least that's what the "Geek Squad" guy intimated to me by his not-so-subtle wide-eyed ganders at my computer when I brought it in to have them look at it. You would have thought that I had just said, "Hey can you fix my Atari console?"

Anyway, I talked to my mom yesterday and she wanted to know if I wanted to come up and see her. Also, she wanted me to bring the computer. I know she's itching to get her hands on it. When I called her to ask her if she wanted it, she literally squealed with delight. My mom is disabled and lives on the money she gets from the government for her disability, which is, to say the very least, a pittance. She has a desktop computer, but I think she bought it in the early '90s. It's got a 20G hard drive. When I told her that no one even makes 20G hard drives anymore, she looked surprised. Well, she's got so much stuff on her hard drive that she can't even defrag it. It's only got like 1% free space left. She puts recipes on her computer. Lots and lots of recipes. That's what's taking up all the space. It's a wonder she can still get online (she has dial-up *cringe*). I don't know why she doesn't just print them out and put them in a notebook. Or transfer them to a floppy disk. (Yeah, that's right. I said "floppy disk".) Her computer has a cd-drive, but it doesn't have the capability for her to transfer stuff from her hard drive to a cd in the drive. But, she does have a floppy disk drive that she can do that with. I told you her computer was old.

Yesterday, I couldn't get on the internet because there were storms all over the place so my satellite crapped out as it usually does during bad weather. It's irritating, but I'm used to it. So, I decided to use the time to get my old computer ready for Mom to use. I started working on it at about 3pm. I stopped at about 10pm. I thought I was going to go to bed and I tried to, but it just wasn't in the cards for me last night. I tossed and turned, thought and re-thought about the computer and tried not to fall into a crying panic attack for a couple of hours.

I got up about 12am and got the computer out again and started working on it. I had a lot of stuff on there that was just unnessary and things that I knew my mom wouldn't want or need. So, I accidentally deleted this one program (I say "accidentally", but it wasn't an accident. I just didn't remember what that program was for until after I deleted it. It's kind of like locking your keys in your car and realizing you did it the second you shut the door.) The computer display went all weird after I did that. Everything got HUGE. I thought to myself, "Jesus, I'm not blind. What the hell?" So I fixed the screen resolution and then proceeded to move on to other programs to make sure that they were working only to find out that because I had deleted that one program, some of the other programs were now not working right. If I could've kicked myself in the ass I would have. So, I did a System Restore to earlier that same day-to 7pm. I thought to myself, "Surely I didn't delete that program before then." After waiting for what seemed an eternity,the computer rebooted and I checked the Add/Remove Programs section to see if the program I deleted was there. It was, sort of. Only half of it was there.

Fuck.

So, I did another System Restore to even earlier that day-5pm. Another eternity passed while I was growing ever more panicky and hugging one of my decorative, chenile, fringy pillows so tight that I was having trouble breathing. The computer finally rebooted again. I watched with super-impatience waiting for the task bar to load, because if the program had been restored it would show up there. It didn't. So, I checked again the Add/Remove Programs section only to see the same thing I saw before: only half of the program had been restored.

You know how sometimes during the middle of something, you suddenly have this idea pop into your head out of nowhere? As if the computer fairy had just implanted it into your head? That's what happened right then to me. I thought, "I'll just reconnect it to the internet and see if I can re-download the program." So, I disconnected my new computer from the satellite and reconnected the old one. Aha! There was the elusive program. It just popped up on the taskbar once I connected to the internet, but I got a pop-up on screen that said something like, "There was a problem with installation. Your new hardware might not work properly." I should never be the one to fix things because I'm the person who says things like,"Oh, these are just extra parts," then the whole bookcase or whatever comes crashing down. Predictably, I ignored that message thinking that I had met with success. I disconnected the old computer and reconnected the new one back to the satellite.

I moved back to seat myself Indian-style in my big-comfy-chair with my old computer sitting nicely in front of me on my footstool. I don't remember what happened after that. It's all kind of blurry. I think by this time it was probably about 3am or so and I noticed that if I stared at the computer screen long enough, it would morph into two computer screens. Never do LSD. It stays with you for years.

Anyway, I think I tried to remove some unnessary program I had found and the computer said that it needed to be restarted in order for the changes to be complete. So, ok, no big deal. Restart. Only when it did restart, only the little green light on the bottom came on. Nothing else happened. I thought, "Maybe it's assimilating information." So, I waited...and waited...and waited. I watched an entire movie (Dominion: A Prequel To The Exorcist-which, to my amazement was totally different than the other "prequel" to the Exorcist I had seen. I thought it was par for the course considering the night.) while I was waiting for something to come up on the screen.

After the movie was over, I moved to get out of my big-comfy-chair so I could go to the kitchen to get something to drink. In the process, I bumped into my footstool, which in turned jarred the computer sitting on it and it fell to the floor. Not a very hard fall-I have carpet and the footstool is only a couple of feet high, but a fall nonetheless. Freaking out, I pulled the computer from the floor and unplugged it from the wall. (That's another strange thing about that computer. Sometimes you have to start it with only the battery power, or it won't start at all when it's plugged in to a wall socket, but then sometimes it will.) I waited a few minutes, plugged it in again and started it. It started right up like nothing had ever happened,which led me to think, "Maybe I should have dropped it earlier."

By this time, it was about 5am, so I decided that I had done enough with the computer, plus about 2 hours earlier I had taken 2 Klonopin and 2 of Dad's Wondermous Headache Pills in the hopes that I would be able to fall asleep sometime this week. After taking care of the computer, I went to my room and literally fell into my bed. I didn't realize how tired and achey my body was. I still wasn't sleepy, though, so I thought I'd do what I normally do to go to sleep-watch a movie that I've watched 574827485974689254782 times. There are certain movies that within five minutes of my turning them on, I'm sleeping like the dead. Last night, I decided to watch 'Matrix: Reloaded'. Despite my best intentions, however, sleep eluded me. When I finally decided to turn the tv off was when the characters on the screen looked like one body with two heads. Like I said, never do LSD. You never know when the flashbacks will come. The last time I did Acid was when I was 17 or 18 (1987 or 1988). Really, it stays with you for YEARS.