Talk about your upgrades
Did you miss me?
I had a good excuse. I bought a
new computer and had the flu. I know. You get the
latter, but not the former.
It's like this. Ever get a new
motorcycle? Or a power mower? Or a really gorgeous
girlfriend? Then you know my problem: too much
power, not enough skill. I was completely
overwhelmed by this new supercomputer, yet I
couldn't keep my hands off my mouse.
I ordered it on a Thursday and it
arrived the next day in two large boxes delivered
from the UPS guy at 10 a.m. I had everything
assembled by 11 a.m. By noon, I crashed the
system. I didn't get the "sad Mac" face or the
"chimes of death" or even the "cherry bomb" system
error. I got the "hand with the middle finger
upraised."
My computer told me to get
fucked.
No problem. Just reinstall the
system. Which I did. Three times that day. Twice
the next day. And once a day the next three days.
I tried system 7.5, system 7.5.3, system 7.5.5 and
finally system 7.6.1. And each system gave me the
same response: fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck
you.
I was waiting for a message to
flash on the screen: YOU ARE TOO FUCKING STUPID TO
OWN A COMPUTER!
Then I got the flu. That was
Tuesday. It got worse on Wednesday. I felt better
on Thursday, but still bad enough to use it as an
excuse to miss my column deadline.
On Friday, I felt great. Good
enough to call the Apple support line.
"I think my floppy drive's out."
"Sure. We'll try a few things.
Could you hold a minute?"
He put me on hold and I got the
opportunity to listen to the Dave Matthews Band. I
think I heard him talking to some other Apple
techie in the background. I think he said, "This
guy's too fucking stupid to own a computer," but I
might be wrong.
He got back on the phone and
asked me to perform some contortions on the
keyboard.
"Okay, reboot, but this time hold
down the command key, the P key, and the R key."
Sure, I can do that. Would you
like me to speak pig Latin in Chinese, too?
It didn't work. My floppy drive
was still out.
"Hold on and I'll connect you
with a technician."
"Sure," I said. Now I get a
technician? What was he, a therapist?
Another voice got on the phone.
"Well, Mr. Jasper, we're going to
have an Austin technician give you a call in a
while." Then he hung up.
I'll give it a week, I thought,
then I'll call them back. After all, only my
floppy drive is broken. The rest of my computer is
humming along fine. Who needs a floppy drive
anyway? It's like ordering cable and finding out
you can't get the local access channels. It'd be
nice, but it's HBO I want.
Amazingly, I got a call ten
minutes later. The guy said he could come out
Monday and fix my floppy drive. We were on for 11
a.m. at my place.
So he shows up on Monday and I'm
wondering what this is going to cost me?
"You have on-site service through
your Apple warranty," he says.
Great. I show him the computer,
and he cracks it open like a walnut.
"So you believe me?" I asked. "I
mean... you don't think it might be a system
problem, do you?"
He gave me a look. Do I have to
tell you what I thought he was thinking?
"No, if the floppy drive isn't
reading your disks, it's busted. I'll just replace
it."
Fifteen minutes later, it's all
fixed. And now here I am, writing my column at
three in the morning on the shiny new machine,
barely making my deadline... just like when I used
my old black & white Mac Classic II.
But I ain't got no Classic II no
more -- I've got power!
I am now the proud owner of a new
Macintosh 8600 with 200 MHz, 32MB ram, 2MB VRam, a
17-inch Sony monitor (I was thinking about a
20-incher, but I was afraid I'd hurt myself), 12X
CD Rom, 2GB hard drive and a 100 MB Zip Drive.
I feel like Tim Allen.
After the computer technician
left, I spent the next hour opening and closing
applications. It's amazing. PageMaker used to take
90 seconds to open on my Classic II. Now I can
pull it up in six seconds flat. MS Word, six
seconds, Netscape Navigator 3.1 in four seconds,
Aldus Freehand, five seconds. I've timed it.
Several times.
I got on Netscape and cruised the
web. First, I looked at my website. Did you know
that it was mostly black and white?
Not any more. I've added blue.
And off-white. And a little magenta.
If it were socially acceptable,
I'd use nothing but magenta.
Don't worry. I have no intention
of becoming a graphics guru on the web. I'm still
going to cater to the poor schmuck who owns a Mac
Classic II. The pages will come up fast and look
good on black and white.
Besides, I'm not an artist. I'm a
writer.
Still... tonight I got entranced
by the colors of the web. Blues and greens and
magenta, loads of magenta. I saw websites that
featured sounds and animation. I sent America On
Line e-mail with green backgrounds and gold
handwriting. I... was... so... gauche. I
downloaded games. I downloaded utilities. I
downloaded sounds. I downloaded graphics. I
downloaded pictures of horses. I downloaded
pictures of naked women. I downloaded pictures of
naked women with horses.
Then it struck me... I'd like to
download a pizza and a pint of Newcastle. Why not?
You can download my column, print it out, and
kablamo -- you got the real thing. My words on the
printed page. So why can't I download beer and a
pizza? We need better peripherals. Something
that's a cross between a printer and a microwave.
Is this too much to ask? I think not.
Limitations. Always limitations.
And it's not just with technology, it's with me.
Here I am, clicking away on a new extended
keyboard and it's now 3:30 a.m. Tomorrow's Turkey
Day and I'm late, late, late. Technology isn't my
problem. I am my problem.
I need to upgrade my brain.
I did it once before. In the
mid-eighties I upgraded my entire system with the
SSU English Degree 3.7 (SSU stands for Sonoma
State University, but I think Microsoft bought
them out last year.) That worked all right for a
while, but some of my system extensions
conflicted, particularly Pot Enabler 1.0.1. Sure,
Pot Enabler enhanced my multi-media capabilities,
but it slowed the system way down. I needed more
speed. The new source I was using, Java In The
Morning, helped but I needed more power. So in the
mid-80s, after college and during what I like to
call my income-producing-years, I inserted a
Cocaine Accelerator.
I know what you're thinking.
Sure, it gives the system a kick, but what about
the expense? What about the maintenance? Not to
mention the conflicts with the Penis Extension,
which is one extension you just can't throw in the
trash. (Some system administrators have simply cut
it off, but then it wasn't their hardware was it?)
My ram is good. I can call up a
lot of applications at the same time. I can run
Writer Guy 2.2, Singer-Songwriter 44.0, and even
funzy things like Lover 6.9 and Cigar Smoke Plus,
but damn, my hard drive is shot. I try to get my
data from storage and I gotta tell you... it's not
all there. It needs, what? An optimizer? I can
definitely use a faster CPU and I don't even want
to talk about my Zip Drive in public.
Thank god my floppy drive still
works.
* * *
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This column aims to be
funny. If you can read anything else into it, you're
on your own. Copyright 1997 by Mike Jasper.
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