New computer is new

I'm a computer guy.

Some guys are car guys. They love cars. Even if they don't have a 'pimp' car, they know car stats and car stuff and they make psuedo-obscene monkey noises when an awesome car rolls by. For some guys, it's boats. Or guns. Or tools. Or whatever thing it is.



As a little kid, I used to draw computers on the chalkboard in the garage at home. I used to count down the days and the hours to the computer classes we had in elementary school, on old, ancient Apple Computers. I used to handle the 5 1/4 floppies with reverence. My fascination didn't end there. In middle school, I was one of the onlh kids who understood what a network was, much less a token-ring adapter.

My fascination with computers is much like my fascination with other things. It only carries me so far - to the point where I'm good at something, I have a solid base of knowledge with some surprisingly in-depth tidbits and no small amount of technical skill. I'm nowhere near the level of a true IT professional. (Though if you squint at it really hard, my job could make me an IT professional. If you squint really hard.)

Really, my love affair with computers is more about their use as tools. Although we didn't really explore such things in school, we did get a cursory introduction to things like word processing and spreadsheets and databases - although practical and incredibly powerful tools, the teachers stuck with my generation didn't trust or live with computers the way teachers now do. Nowadays, teachers put computers (and the internet) in the same category and reading, writing and math. Survival skills without which you will flounder in the world.

Most of my peers saw computers as a novelty item - or later, a necessity for typing up a reporrt. Or playing games. They were tools, yes - but tools like pencils are tools or rulers are tools. They are things that you use to accomplish specific and limited goals. There was a brief period of time where computers meant more to most people, but that passed with the advent of smart phones and all the rest of the hand-held gadgetry. Already, tech bloggers are saying netbooks are on their way out in favor of touch screen 'phones.'

I guess I'm an anachronism. My phone is still pretty stupid and doesn't always tell me when I've been texted (but I'm still marvelling at the novelty of a color screen on a cell phone! Those haven't been around as long a some folk tend to think!)

I'm an anachronism because I still love my computer. Specifically, my portable computer.

For me, computers were a revelation and have become the single most important tool in my life. Take a guy with a slightly-better-than average creativity, a solid dollop of diction, decent intelligence and a smattering of almost-there skills and you have a guy who would be spectacularly useless.

Put that guy behind a computer, and he can be a genius. When I was a kid, especially in middle school, I saw computers as my salvation. Not in so much as they would give me a lucrative career, but they could save me from mediocrity. A dyslexic writer is a slow writer - until you give him a keyboard and a spell-checker. I'm a crappy artist who can't draw stick figures without a ruler and compass, but I'm a pretty damn good desktop publisher and an almost halfway decent graphic designer (as long as the graphics are someone else's.)

In truth, I'm not good at much other than writing, talking and inductive reasoning. With a computer, I discovered I was able to write, talk to people, enter into communities and even be respected for what I said and did as opposed to dealing with all the social issues I had at school or at work. (Yay for BBS!. And if you don't know what that means, don't tell me.) I could be good at almost anything!

(Many of my peers have long since had this epiphany, but as I had it earlier, I always had an edge in the learning curve/skill department.)

I decided to know as much as I could about computers and I got really good at them. Teachers asked me for help and I had a pretty high level of access on my middle school network, thanks to an awesome SysOp computer teacher. I learned DOS and I learned some coding and I learned how and why computers worked.

With a computer, I wasn't just a geek (and therefore an object of pity and/or cruelty). I was useful.

So one day, I decided I needed to take a computer with me everywhere. I think I was in 8th grade and the thought of having my very own laptop computer was the Holy Grail of Awesome. It's like that boy who loves cars mowing lawns to earn the cash to buy his first junker. In my case, it was slinging french fries and cream gravy at a fried chicken fast food hut to earn the scratch to buy my first bare-bones system.

I bought it out of the classified ads, if that tells you anything. It was a Toshiba with a 586 processor and a 1.3 GB hard drive. (Which, back then, was freakin' enourmous.) It didn't even have a CD-ROM. My uncle helped me install Windows 95 on it. There were so many 3.5 disks. It had wordpad.

But it did have a modem (33.6!) and could access my bulletin boards and that was good enough for awhile. Suffice it to say, I've gone through a fair few laptops in my day. Some have been the luxury sport cars and have cost me an arm, a leg and my self-respect. Some were junkers with Windows ME that I could barely make work, no matter how hard I tried.

My latest computer was a netbook by ASUS. It was a great little machine that did far more for me than the specs or the design said it should. It accompanied me on all my recent travels to Seattle and Dayton and San Antonio. Despite being a tiny thing designed for limited use, it did the work of a full-size, fully equipped computer, handling graphic and web design and lasting through two NaNoWriMos.

It died a couple of weeks ago, and I panicked. I was devastated. My stalwart companion, my trusty computer was dead. I didn't kill computers! I worked them into the ground and retired them when they were at the end of their useful span. My skills kept them going to the bitter end and I could always judge right when it was time to start saving for the next one.

This time, I killed it. I overworked it, I think, and it's poor heart finally gave out.

It took a few hours for it to sink in. My computer was dead.

Hence, the panic.

Oh, I knew my data was fine. The hard drive wasn't the problem, the power supply was - I hadn't lost anything.

But. I didn't have a computer. What was I going to do without one? How would I function? What purpose would I serve without my all-important tool? How could I do my job without one? How could I communicate or, or...or just be me without a computer?

I was in a horrible state for about 24 hours. I didn't know what to do with myself without my computer. It wasn't even the internet (I realized that fairly quickly) - it was the machine itself and all the infinite possibilities and infinite abilities it represented. I tried doing what other people say they do for fun - playing video games didn't work and watching TV has never been my thing. I could read, but...even then, there was this giant, gaping hole in my universe I had no idea how to fill.

Yeah. I know. I have a problem.

I knew I could fix my netbook, but it would take weeks (to get the parts) and cost almost as much as a new netbook. Which was about all I could afford.

So.

With the help of a good friend (who happened to work at Geek Squad), a loan from my father and a cash advance from work, I was able to acquire a new computer. And it was during the process of said acquisition, I realized I had fallen into complacency. Without my friend's help, I never would have known the netbook was a bad idea, because I had no idea that Windows 7 Starter wouldn't have done what I needed it to do.

Nor would I have known why upgrading a netbook to Windows 7 Home was a Bad Idea(TM). Why? Because for the first time in my entire life, I had been running a computer that was two operating systems behind. I didn't even know what the different versions of the OS did!

My shame was almost enough to make me decide to go luddite, but that lasted only as long as it took me to realize that it meant I would no longer be a Computer Guy (if I still was).

I indebted myself all over the place, put my old hard drive in a case to make it an external and bought the new computer. My father fronted me enough money to get the insurance, software and protection I need for it (so that I don't end up destroying it on accident). I got it home and went through that delicious process of setting up the computer - pulling it out of the box, peeling off the foam and turning it on for the first time. Ignoring that small fear that what you bought is really a peice of crap (although this time, knowing the insurance I had on it and the research both my Geek Squad buddy and I had done on it, I was more confident than usual about the computer.)

It didn't take me long after that to realize I was in over my head. Windows 7 and Windows XP were vastly different. It was like learning Windows 95 after working on Windows 3.11.

Almost nothing worked the same! Oh sure, the basics of windows are the same, but the file structure and root directories and startup protocols were different. (No boot.ini file? Wtf is this?)

I hate being ignorant, especially about computers. So I went and bought a thick book on Windows 7; I refuse to let my computer be smarter than me.

Okay, so you read this far and you probably don't see the point of this entry at all. The point is pretty simple: I had never really given much conscious thought to how important computers are in my life and I sometimes wonder if they have the same place with other people, or do others see computers the same way I see the microwave. It's dead useful, but it doesn't occupy a central portion of my identity.

I'm damn glad I have my new computer, even though I'm still not entirely sure I'm comfortable without Windows 7. I think without the computer, I might be in a lot more trouble than I thought.