The initial setting up of my new A-I-O Dell Desktop computer was initially relatively painless. It really is almost a plug-and-play situation.
I’m typing this blog on the tiny, new chicklet sized sleek modern white keyboard that I will never get used to because my sausage fingers can never strike just one key and I seem to be ineluctably drawn to striking the CAPS LOCK button.
However, as with the first time with any new technical toy, or sex for that matter, you approach it with trepidation. Do not fuck this up. You only get to make one first impression.
Computers ask you a lot of questions as you are setting up. It’s almost like a skillful cross examination. A questioning lawyer tries to get his/her witness into a hypnotic pattern of easy questions so that they’ll drop their guard and when the lawyer senses the right opening, they slide in the gotcha “”when did you stop beating your wife?”
So, it is with any computer set up. You snooze; you lose. (Note, the rare use of a semi-colon)
And once you step on the set-up landmine that’s it. The computer never forgets and will allow nothing you do to change that answer.
So, you can understand my anxiety as I try to install my hard-won loyal PC Matic – a rare lifetime 5 simultaneous computer license – when this wonderful new AI friendly screen is really trying hard to bring its best friend McAfee to the dance. Me and McAfee go way back, sat next to each other in kindergarten. Never liked each other.
Then there is Carbonite, my savior of my digital cloud memory that has been backing up my data files on a regular basis for a decade and has seen me through the crash of many prior computers. This time it tells me that for some reason or another, surely my fault, it hasn’t backed up my computer for a couple of months. Luckily, during the lapse, I haven’t done any creative writing that I haven’t already shared with the world through my blogs and social media, and I couldn’t give a shit if I lost some legal work product from that period.
Anyway, I downloaded everything onto my detachable D drive before pulling the plug on the last computer, in anticipation for just this glitch. Belt and suspenders.
And the latest generation of computer genie expects its new master to speak computereze. It will ask you during set-up if you want it to perform some computer-speak service, knowing full well you have no idea what it is talking about, and are too embarrassed to admit to your ignorance. So, because you are too proud to do a little research before answering, while you are expecting a wonderful tea-bagging, you are actually getting a Dirty Sanchez.
My latest AI has actually laughed at a few of my responses.
This is how the Terminator film series should have started.
And then there is the waiting as the new computer accepts all of your digital history into their new hard drive storage space in one continuous gulp because there are not enough days left for you here on earth to actually sort through everything item by item to decide if you really need to allow each orphaned bit of data onto the Titanic’s lifeboat.
My new computer has promised to take three days to download my life’s work. Every time I have checked for an update, the glacier has barely moved.
When I finally toddled off to bed last night, leaving Lisa to consume the last of yesterday’s news, I found the Beagle Brothers sleeping peacefully, unburdened by their caretaker’s computer misery. Getting into bed was like playing drunk Twister.
But, despite being mentally exhausted by shepherding this transformative process, once I balanced this sorry old ass along the uncomfortable edge mattress seam, like a gymnastic beam, clinging desperately onto that raised seam on an edge where lemmings perish with my butt cheeks, I lay awake doom-scrolling through Tik-Tok, clicking as many buttons I could, short of emptying my bank account, to support every animal rescue in the world that now knows I’m a sucker for four hungry paws/hooves, separated only by a video of the occasional indie artist who is trying find an audience on the other side of the world by sharing fifteen seconds of their new song. I root for them all.
I promise myself that when TCS finally gets its movie deal, and it will, I will drop massive sums on all of these animal rescues where any creature faces euthanasia and do my best to invite all the indie artists to submit something for the soundtracks. Win-win.
It was much more enjoyable, less traumatic, and far less charitably expensive when the Almighty Internet Algorithm understood – without this old and naturally testosterone toxic male ever having to search for anything – Jimmy’s curse – that random tawdry bouncing high beams were more likely to activate my retinas. Lisa must have child proofed my phone. Sigh.
A curse on every level to be a Luddite in the Twenty-first century.
Anyway, if it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium.
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969) – IMDb
So, my fine, five readers, let us all finish up whatever caffeine related product sustains us and get out there and do whatever it is that is expected of us by society. Or not.
I’m going to watch some paint dry while my new computer swallows some data.
And no matter what else we get up to, let us make today a great one.
