So it became apparent last week that the baby elephant laptop was not serving it's function. And when I say function I mean, the only thing that we expected of the damn thing was to find it's way onto the internet once in awhile, and we even bought it a little wireless card of it's very own so that it could do that...we stored nothing on this computer. We did not play games on it, we did not store music or pictures on it....nothing, because it's a 10 year old baby elephant, and we didn't want to stress it out. I even tried to be sympathetic when it ate my blog entries by crashing before I could post them....which is why I haven't been keeping up my end of the "update the blog more often" contract that I have with myself. I have been updating the blog damn it...just not posting.
Actually I'm about to recreate one of those eaten entries right now, to demonstrate why it is that the baby elephant is going to the elephant grave yard.
Daughter creature brought home a disk with a partially typed school paper on it, saying that because of computer problems in her classroom she'd been unable to type it up during school, but that technically it was past due. Simple enough perhaps, but about two months ago the word processor disappeared from the laptop. Poof. Not there anymore, not even an icon on the desktop that didn't click to anywhere. So we had to go down to the internet cafe and buy time at $1 per 15 minutes so that she could type up her paper. Not only that, but when we get to the internet cafe their fancy shmancy computers don't have floppy drives. I boot up the trusty (or untrusty) as the case maybe, laptop, which promptly dies because it's little battery holds no juice. I had to crawl under the desk next to us and plug it in so that I could boot up the school floppy disk, email her partially typed paper to myself, and then open it on the cafe computer so that she could finish it....which then had to be emailed back to myself so that we could save it and she could take it to school to print it out, because, oh yeah, the cafe printer was broken. Of course it was. So Rat Girl typed...slowly at $1 per 15 minutes....and I blogged.
Slight digression...there is a role playing group/club/swarm? what's the collective noun for a bunch of gamers? that meet at the cafe on Sunday nights. I never really got into organized roleplaying myself, I never even owned my own dice, but I did hang out with gamers in my black lipstick and tattered silk days, so I feel like I have some idea of what it's all about. Now, correct me if I've been wrong all these years, but isn't the whole idea to enter this imaginary place where you get to be a sexy ass kicking elf with lavender colored eyes and the ability to levitate anyone who messes with you? Or even a scary sewer dwelling vampire that's uglier than any creature has the right to be but can magic their victims minds into doing whatever it wants them to? Big guns, big tits, and role your D12 to see if you actually hit the guy? Right? Have I been laboring under some misapprehension all these years? Here is an actual quote from the game in progress while Rat Girl was working on her paper:
"So you're waiting in line at the post office, but it doesn't open for another 1/2 an hour, what are you going to do?"
"Well, I guess I could try to talk to some of the other people waiting in line at the post office."
"And what about us? We just went to pick up some bagels, should we just meet them back at the house?"
Excuse me but, what? If that's your fantasy life then dudes, you should trade places with me because I get to do all sorts of cool shit. Here are a list of the super exciting things that I get to do on an almost daily basis.
Pick up child from school.
Return library books.
Wash dishes, and or prepare food.
Scoop the cat litter.
Put gas in one or the other of the vehicles.
Prepare after school snacks.
Run errands...the excitement just never ends!
But returning to Daughter Creature and the school project. She got it all typed and formatted and everything, and we even got it saved back onto her floppy disk. I the time that she'd been working another computer user had sat down next to him and I had to ask him to move so that I could crawl under his desk and unplug my computer...he was very nice about it. But when I got the computer moved to another spot in the cafe and plugged back in, it had crashed and the blog entry was lost.
And then when I tried to reboot it the wireless card wouldn't work, the networking utility crashed the computer about 10 times in a row.
So anyway. We got to get a new computer. Actually we got the oldest, cheapest model that we could find on sale because they wanted it out of their store so that they could put nicer newer more expensive things on the shelf, but we bought it at a store, and it came in a box. I'm very excited.
See! A picture that I took with my phone and then posted directly to the blog! Previously I would have had to take out the memory card and put it in the special card reader. That doesn't seem like such a big deal, but trust me, it's like some kind of miracle.
Ragnar....happy computer owner.
1 comment:
I was over here thinking to myself " were they special magical bagels? bagels of summoning? (which I hear are great lightly toasted and with a bit of cream cheese..)Was the post office guarded by orcs?" and then I realized that I too needed a life.
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