guff

Computers are (sometimes) my enemy

If and when I choose to take a week off from cruising the Internet, I typically have a pretty good seven days. Sure, I eventually come to miss it. Withdrawal signs kick in around day three, though I’ve gotten good at hiding the hand tremors—really just a bit of unconscious ghost keyboarding, but people I see at the mall and whatnot don’t know that. In any case I treat the time away as a sort of colonic, a purging of the virtual intestines.

But the key word here is “choose.” I choose to perform the purge. Having someone sneak up on you and… well, that’s something all together different!

So yes, I’ve been off-line this past week; not by choice. And during that time, I picked up a new computer. I’m sure you can divine how these two events are interrelated. My laptop, the second and quite possibly last one I’ve owned, acquired several problems leading to it having a partially crippled keyboard, a funky CD-ROM drive, a non-functioning display and a wireless LAN card that finds my router repulsive. Oh yeah, and the hard drive appears to be slowly but surely on the way out. Other than that it’s a great little notebook. Buy Dell!

The real problem is, I can’t afford to buy a new system right now. And I can’t not afford to buy one, because I also can’t afford to be without one. Thank you, Mr. Heller. So Wednesday I visited my local Best Buy, banged options around in my head for a time, then picked up this little sucker. At a third the size of my last tower PC, it is pretty freaking little. I’ve been doing my computer work on a small desk designed for laptops, and HP’s Slimline leaves just enough room for a monitor, keyboard and mouse. The cost, thankfully, should only perform a short-term hurt on my bank account.

So I’m back on the Internet, and I have, yet again this year, a new PC. I can only hope the next forced colonic I go through doesn’t require such a complete flushing out.