computers [snarl]

The first computer I ever saw was one of the first PC's made by IBM, sitting in the living room of an IBM employee in Boca Raton, Florida, where they developed their "Peanut." It had a tiny screen and used an audio tape for memory. Peripherals? A mouse was still a rodent, "floppy" was an adjective, and a hard drive meant Interstate 75 through Georgia. I remember thinking it was cute but what possible use would I have for one? Lawyers crunch words and ideas, not numbers. OK, so a guy spends four hours typing checkbook data into his new computer. When he's done he says to his wife, "Looky here, Thelma Lou, I told the computer we have $310.82 in our checking account, and the computer just told me we have $310.82 in our checking account." (Yawn.)

I was thinking of that last night when our computer crashed. With a snap and a crackle, it all went dark. The machine tried to reboot itself. Crash. It tried again. Crash. It finally gave me the dreaded Blue Screen of Death with a long, mysterious message about the K_Mode not being able to do something followed by pure gibberish, in English but still gibberish. I fancy myself as semi-adept at dealing with computers but this one mystified me. I took it to a shop first thing this morning where a genuine guru has resuscitated my computers in the past. He opened it up and started testing this and that. It's now after 5:00 and he's still working on it. If he charges me full price for labor, I may as well have bought a new one, although migrating to a new computer is a pain in the heinie. Aaaargh. If you don't think of computers as a hobby they are a monumental waste of time and money.

I'm still at the office, using my office computer and waiting for the River of Steel to thin out so I can drive to a computerless home. I can feel the withdrawal symptoms already. I have three books to read and the Rays-Yankees game is on at 7:00, so the urge to check e-mail one more time and maybe play a game on Shockwave will just have to be sublimated. When I saw the IBM "Peanut," I had no idea what the future would bring. I shoulda bought stock in the company.