Careful what you wish for
Life is confusing. People are confusing. I'm confused.
There have been a few things that we've needed/wanted to do for a while. Nothing ground-breaking or earth-shattering, just updatey, maintenancey things. Things like join the rest of the world and switch from Win 98 to XP and network our 2 computers so that the 4 of us don't have to fight over 1 computer hooked to the internet.
You wouldn't think that either of those things would make your life go to shit, would you? Well, you'd be wrong!
First - the upgrade.
Being only semi-computer literate, we left that to someone who knows about these things - P's husband. This is what he does. We trust him. Ok. Go for it!
He proceeds to load the upgrade onto my 2 gig hd only to find that there's not enough room. So he takes the new 40 gig hd from husband's computer puts it in as the main drive on my machine and uses the 2 gig as a slave because it has all my programs and saved files. We can transfer them over, he says. No problem. However, for some reason, he doesn't load XP onto the new hd. He, instead, loads XP Pro - a bigger, albeit more stable, OS. Initially, it's kind of cool to have a 'work station' for everyone complete with their own log in, preferences, programs, etc. Unfortunately, memory was never discussed. There's not enough of it! Darn thing is now out of available memory as soon as it's booted up and the CPU is running at 100%! OMG What a freakin' nightmare!!! Also, as of 2 days ago, when loading IE to access the internet - the best thing about having the internet is being able to use it, right? - the interface pops up but then sits there for 3 minutes (not exaggerating here!) before it's able to connect. Now, this is not a modem problem and I'll tell you why. Once IE has connected, you're good to go UNLESS you click on a pic or link that opens another window. Same thing happens. The newly opened window sits there for 3 minutes before the info is loaded in. This makes it impossible to play games on Yahoo or MSN because these are 'pop up window' games. Not to mention the fact that if you want to have 2 web sites opened at the same time, you're going to be on the computer forever and chances are that since you're taxing the CPU, the darn thing will freeze up and windows will shut down.
Well, that's where my machine is at the moment. I'm so frustrated with it that I just can't deal with it any more. I'm taking a break to let myself calm down a bit.
Ok, on to husband's computer!
It's downstairs, we finally (thanks to P's husband) have it networked with my machine. Internet access for all! Yippee!!! His machine gets XP - not XP Pro - and is working all mahvelous like. The only thing now is that it suddenly belongs to husband for his exclusive use. It's HIS computer in HIS space. He sits down there for hours and smokes like a smoke producing factory and when you open the door to go down there, it hits you in the face like a damn wall! You can't see or breathe. Our bedroom is downstairs for heaven's sake!!!
Then it's all like "who's been on my computer?" "every time you kids touch a computer is gets trashed!" Now, this is NOT true but it is a darn good excuse to yell and have a shit-fit while making it abundantly clear that NO ONE is supposed to be using HIS computer! Holy freakin' crap!!!!!
I have never so hated anything that I loved as much as I do a computer.
There have been a few things that we've needed/wanted to do for a while. Nothing ground-breaking or earth-shattering, just updatey, maintenancey things. Things like join the rest of the world and switch from Win 98 to XP and network our 2 computers so that the 4 of us don't have to fight over 1 computer hooked to the internet.
You wouldn't think that either of those things would make your life go to shit, would you? Well, you'd be wrong!
First - the upgrade.
Being only semi-computer literate, we left that to someone who knows about these things - P's husband. This is what he does. We trust him. Ok. Go for it!
He proceeds to load the upgrade onto my 2 gig hd only to find that there's not enough room. So he takes the new 40 gig hd from husband's computer puts it in as the main drive on my machine and uses the 2 gig as a slave because it has all my programs and saved files. We can transfer them over, he says. No problem. However, for some reason, he doesn't load XP onto the new hd. He, instead, loads XP Pro - a bigger, albeit more stable, OS. Initially, it's kind of cool to have a 'work station' for everyone complete with their own log in, preferences, programs, etc. Unfortunately, memory was never discussed. There's not enough of it! Darn thing is now out of available memory as soon as it's booted up and the CPU is running at 100%! OMG What a freakin' nightmare!!! Also, as of 2 days ago, when loading IE to access the internet - the best thing about having the internet is being able to use it, right? - the interface pops up but then sits there for 3 minutes (not exaggerating here!) before it's able to connect. Now, this is not a modem problem and I'll tell you why. Once IE has connected, you're good to go UNLESS you click on a pic or link that opens another window. Same thing happens. The newly opened window sits there for 3 minutes before the info is loaded in. This makes it impossible to play games on Yahoo or MSN because these are 'pop up window' games. Not to mention the fact that if you want to have 2 web sites opened at the same time, you're going to be on the computer forever and chances are that since you're taxing the CPU, the darn thing will freeze up and windows will shut down.
Well, that's where my machine is at the moment. I'm so frustrated with it that I just can't deal with it any more. I'm taking a break to let myself calm down a bit.
Ok, on to husband's computer!
It's downstairs, we finally (thanks to P's husband) have it networked with my machine. Internet access for all! Yippee!!! His machine gets XP - not XP Pro - and is working all mahvelous like. The only thing now is that it suddenly belongs to husband for his exclusive use. It's HIS computer in HIS space. He sits down there for hours and smokes like a smoke producing factory and when you open the door to go down there, it hits you in the face like a damn wall! You can't see or breathe. Our bedroom is downstairs for heaven's sake!!!
Then it's all like "who's been on my computer?" "every time you kids touch a computer is gets trashed!" Now, this is NOT true but it is a darn good excuse to yell and have a shit-fit while making it abundantly clear that NO ONE is supposed to be using HIS computer! Holy freakin' crap!!!!!
I have never so hated anything that I loved as much as I do a computer.
posted by bb at 12:09 PM
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