Last week my computer bit the dust. Or I should say, byte the dust. It was my work computer, so it’s running Windows XP, the last good thing to come from an increasingly self-destructive operating system. I got a pop-up telling me that there were nasty compu-viru-thingies and I should immediately buy a stout-sounding anti-virus program from an unknown company. Then my browser went all white for a second, a moment of mortal shock, then all returned to normal. Until I ran a virus scan which identified several problems then locked up. This is not a good sign–it’s like a policeman directing traffic by waving flares and screaming “Run for your lives!” So I ran an even more intrusive virus scan which took five hours and reduced my computer to a safe-mode version of itself, unable to do more than dribble food down its chin and say the shortcut led to a program that couldn’t be found. Fine.
So now I’m working on another computer, which is like wearing someone else’s clothes. Of the opposite sex. Who is half your size. Where are my shortcut keys? Why does this shirt button backwards? All my saved passwords are gone and I can’t log in to anything. And the final indignity–there’s no word processing program. No MS Word, no WordPerfect. My choices: use the WordPad program or write directly on my screen with a Sharpie. I’m dangerously close to choosing the latter.
What does this mean? The blog update is going to have to wait until I get a machine that can move at a pace faster than a turtle buried in a shoebox. There will be an update, but in the meantime I may just write about fun things and intermittently scream about my antique computer. Who knew these old models had brass knobs and steam fittings!
Writer, architect, father, husband.
No OpenOffice? Less hinky than one might expect.