My computer died this week. Shockingly, refurbished electronics are apparently not all that reliable. And for some bizarre and neo-consumerist reason, laptops fall under the replace-rather-than-repair variety.
Yay. Good thing I have a credit card since I emptied out the mad money jar to buy matching Superbowl outfits for my cats.
The laptop search began and ended at Best Buy. I was stressed and in no mood to wander the city in search of the perfect laptop. Unlike The Perfect Cheer, I felt pretty convinced that the perfect laptop probably did not exist (unless someone has perfected virtual chocolate and failed to inform me).
I had Stuart with me and Edward on standby via phone. Good lord, what an arduous process. I'll bet we spent a good hour running back and forth between stations trying to find the best fit. And helpfully, the Best Buy cards all display DIFFERENT information about each computer. Which is really fucking annoying if part of the reason you're buying a laptop is portability and WEIGHT (I found only two information cards that listed weight). And yes genius, it occurred to me to pick the damn thing up but they're secured pretty heavily to the shelf and being able to lift it a mere inch doesn't tell me a goddamn thing.
I finally settled on a smallish HP model and was more or less forced by Bill Gates to accept Windows Vista as my god and personal savior. I took it home to set it up and oh my god... what a fucking nightmare. If I were just a regular girl without regular access to multiple geeks, I'd be investing in stamps and envelopes. I have no idea how "regular people" get their computers set up. I have to imagine that thanks to Windows, a few more geeks have social lives (and perhaps occasional blowjobs).
Once Edward finally got me onto our network, the clean-up process began. HP so thoughtfully provided me with desktop links to Ebay and 45 other bullshit things. Thanks HP, but I'm all good with the translucent green ashtrays. Nor do I need your crappy piece of fuck music player (especially when I have the visceral joy of installing Itunes - another loaded proprietary bullshit program with plenty of ways for me to spend my cheese).
Thanks to 13 years of being involved with a geek, I have learned a thing or two and one of them is how to uninstall programs. I managed to navigate my way through Vista mud to the uninstall feature and was disturbed to find approximately 75 programs, none of which were even remotely identifiable. I deleted a few in a menial gesture of fuck-you but decided that HP probably knows what I'm doing and will cause mustard gas to float out of my speakers for deleting things I shouldn't have. (And you can bet my next stop was the mattress - that DO NOT REMOVE tag was fucking history.)
Moving into this computer was far worse than moving into a new purse. Transferring lip gloss is far less work intensive and stressful. But I'm done now. I think. I still haven't booted up my newly downloaded copy of Itunes and attempted another arranged marriage between my Nano and the new HP. I'm not sure if they'll like each other. One is green and the other... well, isn't.
The moral of the story is that without geeks, we're all fucked. I hear talk of artifical intelligence and what-if-the-computers-become-smarter-than-us-AND-angry but really, I think a bigger fear is pissing off the geeks. The Geek Squad has a lot more power than we realize. Tom Cruise may have Xenu, but we all still bow to Windows. All hail Vista. Please invade my pc in the dark of night with your updates that I will never understand but supposedly "optimize my efficiency." Update me hard.
Yes, Bill. If you say so. Would you like a translucent green ashtray? I have extras.
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