Earlier, I hooked up a new 30" monitor to my Apple Miracle Machine. And it showed me a new miracle. It quit. It would not restart. Just one fading gray screen after another, as I endlessly pushed the start button and waited. I wonder if anyone has ever catalogued the time that can be involved doing such repetitive and mentally exhaustive behaviors. Probably not. It is like the time you can be on the telephone trying to get through the nonsensical voicemail of AT&T. Then, when you get through all that, without having to start over again, you have to give ridiculous language lessons to some really nice, and constantly apologizing, person from Samoa. I do not like the timing meter on my phone. It actually tells me how long I have been on the line. I get mad when it approaches half an hour, especially if I have to go to the bathroom but am afraid to. I worry what the sounds coming from such an act would do to global detente. Then later, after I am off the line, I am sorry I did not do it, just for the recording they are supposedly making of the entire miserable affair. "Here, listen to this...." kind of thinking. But I don't do stuff like that.
I am not bad with computers. In fact, pretty damned good with Apple equipment and software. So what was it that took me out for hours and hours, and had (eventually) the guts of the computer strewn about my office floor? It was the battery. Yes, there is a battery in your computer. I have been told that it has something to do with the constant time your computer must be kept up to, or on, or something. That was the clue that led me to the battery problem. What little I could get on the screen told me that I was back in November of 1969, which would have been bad, as I was in a hospital bed in Japan and not expected to live, just then! I finally found the sucker, got it out, tested it in my Frankenstein equipped basement shop, and raced off to Radio Shack. Without a laptop, which does not like sending or receiving email (and I do not know why that is, being I am so good with computers), I would have been really stuck. I was able to use the internet to investigate the problems (like what do you do once you get your computer's insides out?) and then go back and forth and fix it. Harvey, meanwhile, decided that he was a member of the 'Geek Squad,' without the black and white Volkswagen. He went right into the case and laid down upon the motherboard. It was warm I guess. He stayed in there until I got back from Radio Shack. Now there is fur and stuff on the mother board. But I did not try to clean it. I just put the battery in and threw it all back together. The back of my brain was already feeling the warning signals coming up from my cerebellum. The whole rig was about to go out of the second story window if it did not work. And I like this computer. No, I do not have post traumatic stress! No way!!! But it started, and life is good. How long it will run...I do not know. But it is never ever getting turned off again. Ever.
Back in New Mexico I bought my first real computer in the eighties (I never counted the Commodore 64 as a computer). I put it together and it worked. I found out about the early internet. The University of Michigan was the outfit pushing things back then. Metacrawler was the only search engine in those dinosaur years, that I can remember, anyway. The thing (computer) worked for about three months and then seized up. I called everyone. Hewlit Packard, Norton and such. Nobody could help get the thing unstuck. By the way, my own employees of the time thought I was real cool to have purchased a whole rig on my own and set it up in my home. I was proud of the fact that they thought I was cool. I have never been 'cool.' I have always been the 'no, it's not him,' kinda guy. Mr. Peepers. A light Dom DeLuise. Red Skelton. Not Paul Newman, in any role he ever played. But I digress. When the computer failed, I was younger and PTSD was closer to the surface of my life. I put the entire bunch of parts in my trunk, drove twenty miles out into the desert in my Rover, and dumped it all in a pile. It may still be out there, for all I know. Then I went home, got on the phone and ordered a whole new computer. That one I got going, then left it alone. It was only there for when any of my people might come by. I wanted to be cool that bad. And I allowed that fearsome cerebellum to take over much too quickly.
Today was not a totally bad day, however. The roads got cleared here for the big snow coming tomorrow. Harvey now believes he fixed the problem that was bothering me and is expecting a lot of attention in return. Which he is getting. I met with my friend, the professor, today, as well. He is always great good fun, and also so sharp that I must pay full attention...or he looks skyward and gives God one of those looks that only someone raised in the Catholic Church environment can give. We argued arrogance again. He was gentler today. He had read my blog and probably felt that I was a bit too harsh on myself. Or I believe he felt that way. He does not lie as much as I do. I believe that too. But he does not believe that he lies at all, which I find vastly entertaining.
Lou Penetta is getting ready to be inducted into the CIA. He has no clue. Not one. He thinks he is ready for those aged and weathered, but by no means dull, razor blades over there. Ha. Meanwhile, they are all over at Langley smiling and patting each other on the back. They are thanking Christ that Obama did not appoint someone who would really know what they are doing. It will take Penetta years, which he will not have, to figure that mess out. He must fire all the sub-directors and replace them immediately, and not with their assisstants. It is his only hope. But he won't do that. Nobody ever has. I like him. I like his looks too. He really looks like a nice guy. And we need some nice guys in government these days. Caroline Kennedy is nice too. In her damaged way. So I won't mind seeing her beat out that prig Cuomo. Another of the nepotistically derived creeps.
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