300. My New Computer Is Possessed

So The Husband’s Christmas bonus came through, and the UPS guy delivered a lovely black box full of technology and wonder. Ah, yes, I’m talking about my New Computer.

The brother-in-law Robert was visiting and I wasted no time in securing his Guru Genius Computer Skills in hooking up and setting up New Computer.

First of all, I cannot say enough good things about New Computer and about Robert. New Computer is approximately 800,000 times faster than the old one (give or take a few times). I go to turn on New Computer and in the two seconds where I—sneezed? blinked?—new computer is up and running! No warm-up required here! The old computer might have taken 15 minutes or 4 hours to warm up, depending on its mood.

New Computer has a better memory capacity too. As I was flipping through the 500-page manual, Robert told me that New Computer has a capacity of 12 million gigabytes of RAM. I took a peek at the old instruction pamphlet for the previous computer: it had one half mini-byte of memory. Maybe less.

Also, Robert explained to me that although I had been referring to the old computer (hereafter to be called: That Piece Of Crap, or TPOC for short) as suffering from Alzheimer’s, computers are not technically able to become afflicted with this disease. (Did I mention that Robert is super-smart?) No. It’s not that TPOC was forgetting things, it’s just that TPOC had no more memory left for new important information (information like, that blog posting I just spent an hour on, or Tall’s school report on Martin Luther King complete with footnotes, or all of our financial information and tax records for the previous twelve months, or photos of the kids from Christmas).

Once, (and I know you think I am making this up but I assure you I am not) TPOC actually flashed a scary warning message at me. It read:

****Virtual Memory Almost Full****

Yikes, what does that even mean?

So, anyway, as I was saying, TPOC has gone to that great computer graveyard in the sky (okay, TPOC is sitting right behind me on the floor with random wires sticking out everywhere until we can figure out what to do with it) and I am typing on my lovely New Computer.

(takes quick break to pat New Computer and give it a smooch)

Yes, I luuuuuuhhhhvvvvvve New Computer.

But.

There’s always a “but”, isn’t there?

It seems that New Computer (I’d better whisper here, I don’t want New Computer to be offended or worse, I don’t want TPOC to laugh and mock me) is quite possibly….. possessed. There I am, typing along and my super high-speed rate of 23 words per minute (some of them even spelled correctly the first time, natch), when I oh-so-subtly brush against an extra “helper” key along the bottom row of the keyboard and WHAM! I’m on some other screen I’ve never seen before. Now, this, I suppose, is at least more interesting than getting that bizarro page that TPOC used to deliver (“page has expired” or worse “internet connection lost—report problem?”).

But, like that bratty kid in 8th grade who had all the answers (the correct ones too) and had to raise his hand every five seconds to share his wisdom with the entire class, these extra keys are just show-offy.

I don’t know what they do. I don’t particularly want to know what they do. Heck, they might be able to fly me to Mars, but I just want to look at that periwinkle blue scarf on etsy, thankyouverymuch.

What kind of screens pop up, queries The Husband after he decides he can’t stand my whining anymore (”I thought you wanted a new computer, and what does TPOC stand for again?”). Well, if I am typing a document, an “Outline” option might suddenly appear. I scan in desperation for the “GO BACK” arrow. Please, just let me GO BACK! Another fun one is: New Computer will make some sort of happy chime sound and then I realize I have inadvertently closed the window I was just working on. Ack! No chimes! No chimes! I am like Pavlov’s dogs in reverse.

So, New Computer and I have come to an uneasy truce. I will still smooch it and pat it, but I will also try my hardest to type with my fingers up high and not dragging on the secret helper keys.

So far, so goo 82**^ksjnj$#doaifj009w4//9qqoh37&-wenbk

Error

Function override

Restarting system

Reboot

MOV
(“Moping Over Vibrations”)