At the beginning of this Horror Story I was not typing.  Yes, I actually picked up a pen and notepad, and all for a good reason: technology sucks.

            Let’s face it: how many times have yo lost hours of work when some evil little computer gremlin took over?  How often do you face the blue screen of death proudly proclaiming some obscure technobabble that basically translates to “I hate you”?  Well friends, be thankful if this is all you’ve faced.

            It began innocently enough.  Last year, when I was a freshman, my parents bought me a laptop.  This is my first computer that I didn’t have to share, so I was happy.  Then it arrived.  And I found out that that the virus scan was two years out of date.  And the battery, which was supposed to run for six hours, actually lasted about two. (Now it’s down to about twenty minutes.)  And later, I discovered that there are no accessories compatible with the Dell Inspiron 5000.  But no matter, my computer was still good.  It was mine and all that fun stuff.  It even made it though freshman year without too many traumas.  Then my brother got his computer.  Larger hard drive, internal modem and network card, DVD rom/CD writer.  All that and cheaper too.  Mine has a microphone and his doesn’t, but who cares?

            So that irked me.  But I have my scanner, and now a CD writer, so it was cool for awhile.  But then things started to go insane.  My modem cord broke, programs started mysteriously blowing up small third world countries, and then, it happened.

            One day, I was unsuspectingly staring at my computer, expecting to go online in no time, and it froze.  Ok, no problem, this isn’t all that unusual.  So I restarted it.  And it froze.  So I beat the shit out of it, so as to fix the problem.  This resulted in a strange click click sound that did not particularly inspire confidence.  Then it proceeded to introduce me to the slowest program on the face of the planet.

            You know that annoying blue screen that pops up when you shut your computer down wrong?  The one that says something intelligent like “Windows was not shut down properly”?  Supposedly it checks for messed up files and such.  As if a possibly broken thing could tell you if it were broken.

            Well, anyway, that progam is ligh speed—hell, ludicrous speed—compared to surface scan.  Surface scan is what your computer does when it suddenly realizes that all the stuff it was supposed to be fixing with scandisk wasn’t fixed and now too much is broked to allow the system to work.  This program goes through ‘clusters’, whatever the hell they are.  My computer has about one million, two hundred twenty something thousand of these clusters.  After six hours it had gone through twenty thousand.  And every time it found a ‘bad’ cluster, someone had to hit enter.  Because it can’t have a ‘fix all’ button.  And you never know, I might want to leave it broken.

            So it took too long, and my mom called Dell because I would have screamed, cried, and generally been hysterical had I done so.  After about two minutes of ‘what went wrong’ discussion, Dell informed us they would send a new hard drive.  So, great, except that I needed files off the broken computer.  So my mom agreed to keep the computer until the hard drive arrived, and try to get Windows running.  And to think I went home for a rest!

            The drive arrived on Tuesday, so my wonderful mother brought it and every installation disk she could find up with her.  Allan, the resident Computer God, announced that he would help me retrieve my files.  Did I complain that surface scan is slow?  Never mind that, this took forever.  Windows wouldn’t start long enough for me to get files, so after six thousand tries I learned how to retrieve files through DOS.  Try it sometime, when you don’t have anything better to do like, say, oral surgery without anasthetic.

            I managed to get all the files I wanted—after about four hours.  The next day came the mighty hard drive installation.  That part was easy.  After that, however, getting Windows in was impossible.  The Computer God himself was necessary to complete the task, chanting arcane rituals and waving magic wands when I wasn’t looking.  With Windows installed, he proceeded to install every strange file I could ever need and a few that I didn’t know existed.  After that, I could install things myself.  So far, I’ve installed my printer, network card, and CD writer, but I’m enjoying the sight of only megs full on the drive.  Cherish the moment, I suppose.

            Calamity, though.  I don’t have Microsoft Word.  Nor can I download pictures from my camera.  And I don’t have my virus scanner, either.  But I suppose I’ll survive until break (no, not really, but I can lie like anyone).  So if you happen to be walking past Hillside and hear a loud crash, don’t worry.  It was probably just me playing frisbee with my laptop.

 

Author’s note: I still don’t have virus scan, but for the most part everything else works.  Except the modem.