It's Alive!

 I haven't posted any ramblings for a couple of weeks now, largely because my technology failed me.  There I was, minding my own business, when I arbitrarily decided to reboot my computer.  It was moving too slowly to suit me, and we all know that rebooting is the silver bullet that scares the demons away.  I shut it down, but when I tried to start it back up again, I got an error message.  So I did it all again, and again got the error message.  I'm so proud of myself that I didn't panic.  The ONLY reason that I didn't was that I had my Kindle Fire and my cell phone that I could use as temporary communicators.

I immediately texted my first line of defense with computer problems: my daughter who lives in Washington State--a half-continent away from where I live in Indiana.  She is always my Level I tech support.  She's good at figuring things out.  Her husband is Level II.  (He is a Senior Program Engineer for Microsoft.)  For two days, we traded Google how-to's to try to break into the computer's BIOS page.  It was only on the second day that I actually got that achieved.  Thereafter, Level II was advising me by telephone, remotely.  He was patient.  I was patient.  In spite of that, both Levels declared that my friendly laptop had breathed its last.  It is likely fixable, if one has the money for shipping or an expensive geek squad, but we all agreed that those levels of funds would be better spent on a new computer, since the Lenovo was already seven years old.  (That's a long time in Computer Years!)

Knowing my reticence to make decisions about a new computer, Level I took the reins.  She asked me for a budget amount and my computer needs.  I gave her my budget amount but said I have no clue what my computing needs are.  Basically, I need it to work when I turn it on.  Is that specific enough?  Level II recommended one within my budget, and in the span of one mouse click, my new computer was on the way from Costco.  It was estimated for delivery on Wednesday, then changed to Tuesday before 7:00 PM.  

All day on Tuesday, I watched out the window and/or checked the front stoop for the delivery.  I've never had a Porch Pirate theft (yet), but I sure didn't want the first one to be my new computer!  Finally, it arrived--at 7:19 PM--so I could relax for the rest of the day.

Level I stood by most of the next day, waiting for me to get the computer out of the shipping box and set up, etc...but there were other things to do.  Behind the Lenovo, the computer desk was filthy.  I had to clean out all of those dust bunnies..  It took at least 15 minutes to break the computer out of the shipping box,  Then I had to study the diagram of the new HP in order to know what port does what, and to determine what port requires the dongle for the mouse and wireless keyboard.  I did my best not to allow myself to get frustrated with the whole set-up thing.  Then I had to stand on my head to unplug the old and plug in the new.  Puff, puff.  Finally, I pressed the START button, and the computer lit up.  It's alive!!

Level I stuck with me while I got through the whole Microsoft setup thing, even though she and Level II were planning to be gone over the weekend.  THIS weekend.  My insecurities had already convinced me that I would need a lot of hand-holding to get things that I needed on my computer:  AOL, Blogger, my banking site, billing sources, etc...  My old computer had icon shortcuts to take me to those places, and I was convinced that I couldn't do that by myself.  And then Level I said, "Those are just websites."  (Translate:  "Listen, dummy, you can already do websites on the new computer.  You don't need the shortcuts to get you there in a pinch.")  My totally innocent response was, "Oh...."

There is still a bunch of tweaking that needs to be done for which I will continue to need assistance.  I get by with a little help from my friends.

 I'm going to name the new 'puter either Lazarus or Phoenix.  Or maybe the Last Leaf because it will likely be the last computer I will ever own....