The Grid

Hello again. Sorry about the break, but my tupping laptop packed in. AGAIN. This is the second machine in less than two years to go down the electronic plughole, and I’m not best pleased about it.

The first frustration is that my laptop may not actually be quite dead yet. It’s entirely possible that my complete lack of computing knowledge is preventing me from taking the right course of action to fix it, and I don’t really have the funds to keep securing outside help only to find that it truly is kaput.

The main annoyance, however, is the fact that I don’t really like my laptop. At all. Or, for that matter, any computer that isn’t controlled by a brightly coloured set of buttons and joysticks. I’m a big fan of my Xbox, but computers in general can 10001101010101010 right off.

My laptop was essentially an evil little box in the corner of my room, that distilled stress from the ether and printed it on a screen to ruin my life. Or a glorified typewriter, that as well.

I’m not good at the internet. I use it for email. I read online comics. I read about comics. I look at stupid videos on youtube. I watch pornography. I (occasionally) blog about the stupid stuff I think about and my own personal disasters. I use Facebook, although I’m pretty crap at it – I don’t really contribute to the community as a whole and then get sulky when I am ignored as a result. Apart from the first two and the final two, there’s nothing I really miss when I don’t surf the web every day.

So I spent yesterday trying in vain to fix my old lappy, stressing out hugely about an object that, even if I fixed it, would only serve to open up another minor avenue of stress into my life. It sounds like the simplest thing would have been to just smash the offending machine with a claw hammer and light a joint from its smouldering carcass.

Unfortunately life doesn’t allow this, at least at the moment. Maybe some day when I’ve secured my dream job (failed novelist), I’ll be able to use the computer on my terms, and use email in the same way I might a nice stationary set. At the moment the world clamours to contact me through the net, and I don’t seem to be able to make plans or learn anything new without resorting to computers. I can’t hand in my essays without typing them up first (partly because it’s university policy, party because my handwriting absolutely stinks).

But there’s a big upside to all this: I’ve got a sexy new Notebook! It’s what I uploaded all this crap with, AND I can watch pornography again (hell, I’m probably watching it now!).

I feel pretty sorry for my old laptop, banished to beneath the bed. It might still work, might have the resources deep inside itself: only it doesn’t know it, sort of like a washed out boxer in a Sunday special.

Still, I feel better now that I’m back on the grid, instead of more stressed out. It allows me to share my ponderous musings with the world, for one thing. And it’s difficult, knowing that there’s an avenue of communication you aren’t currently a part of. I’d better get used to it, I doubt this is the last technological jump I’ll witness in my lifetime, and I can’t be a crotchety old git forever. I’m only 23, for one thing. So internet, meet my new computer (I shall call her Christine). Hopefully we’ll have a good time together, until I spill beer on her, or drop her in the bath, or download a crippling virus trying to find naked pictures of Christina Hendricks.