The New Computer

For about a month or so, I've been experiencing things. Ungood things. Unfun things, and they're all related to my desktop computer.

I love that machine. It is small, fits perfectly on my desk and still has room for the printer. Then it started forgetting stuff. We'd be in the middle of something and everything would stop, except the strange whirring noise from inside the tower.

The screen would sit there, staring into space, a small puddle of drool forming near the keyboard. At first, I'd try distracting it by clicking something, but that never worked. Sometimes a gentle "tap-tap" on the tower would startle it awake again and we'd be back in business.

Sometimes that wouldn't work and I'd walk away. Usually, in a few minutes, there would be some kind of noise, or the screen would go black for a few seconds and tah-daaah! it would be like nothing happened. Well, nothing is EXACTLY what happened, but you know what I mean.

Then it started staying like that for a longer period. Like 10 minutes. Then 15. I don't know if we would have made it to 20, because I'd just to a hard boot and restore things when prompted. But every time that happened, I would worry.

I'd been given a new (open box, but still new) external hard drive and everything was neatly backed up on it. However, when I went to check on it, I realized I didn't have the key code to access that information, so if there had been a catastrophic failure of epic proportions, I would have been totally screwed. A friend suggested a specific cloud service, so I went for it.

I was warned it would take a while to do that backup, so I was prepared, or so I thought. 12 hours in, it got hung up on a single file, where it sat for many hours. All attempts at moving things along failed, so I turned off the computer.

The next day, I started it up again, and fortunately the backup resumed where it had left off. 20 hours later, it was done. 20 hours, plus the original 12... that makes for a very long time to do anything on a computer.

I knew it was time, so I bit the bullet and called a friend for help. I must say, I am very grateful for the computer savvy people in my life. Especially the ones who do not treat me like an idiot. She asked a few questions, did a quick search, and came up with exactly what I needed for a price I could afford.

She said, "It's solid state, so it will be a lot faster."

She was not kidding. It downloaded chrome in 4 seconds, and took another 30 to install it.

It's not the latest OS or whatever, but it's plenty for me.

Soon, very soon, I'll be attempting to get all my stuff back from the cloud where it rests in tranquil safety. I just hope everything will play nice and all my stuff will come back to me.

(I'll cross my fingers once I'm done typing).