Jared Will Be So Proud

Maybe it's time to face a resources reality.

I'm a digital slave to my computers. What I'm saying is that I can't sleep, eat, answer the phone or even think of leaving the house unless I have their permission. But please don't get the impression that my work stations are bad computers, or that they misbehave on purpose, or that all they need is either a good FORMAT C: spanking or a swift kick in the boot sector.

My babies are old, really really old; that's the problem. So old that when I needed a new mouse I couldn't even find one at the Jockey Lot.

Little old ladies in folding chairs smirked and told me I needed cement lawn bunnies instead. They didn't need Joy Browne to tell them I have old-gear issues. I tried smiling and started sifting through the bins of knock-off Pravda man-bags to distract them ... is cordovan my color? ... but you can't scam a pink-haired old lady on her own turf.

They knew my stuff was old just by the shamed look on my face. Their grandkids in day care had newer computers than me. I drove home in disgrace with no mouse nor new man-bag, convinced that every chow on the parking lot had either wanted to bite me, or tell me I needed a new life.

Probably both.

Seems like only yesterday my Precision 620 Workstations had enough raw computing horsepower to compete with anything NASA or the Russians claimed in their inventory... I even had to apply for an NSA technology permit and sign a liability waiver before taking delivery. After accepting my order on the phone the salesman had matter-of-factly explained, "We can't let just any Joe Blow on the street have Windows NT running on dual Xeon 733 processors at his fingertips, ya know."

I murmured half-heartedly in agreement, wondering how long I could ignore the pestiferous "Joe Blow" slur. Guess his brain was in the middle of a re-boot after the giddy moment of making a sale ... at least he didn't call me "Joe Tomato Can," and for that I'm still grateful.

But five years have passed, and now my poor Precisions are indeed obsolete. I've seen models identical to mine offered on Ebay for less than $200 and nobody bothered placing a bid, not even for spare parts. Yet everytime I think of what 2 gigs of ECC RDRAM had cost me in 1999 dollars ...

Maybe this helps explains why I've spent the last two weeks with my head in a digital cloud, staining my fingers with Windows for Dummies ink, tempting my ticklish twins to transcend their temporary technological tribulations.

In the past 14 days I've learned how to overclock my processors, edit my registry, change my IRQs, install 3-way booting and flashburn my BIOS. On two computers at the same time. Without having to dial Patrick Harris for technical support. Now my darlings are both up and running with no problems.

Sort of.

When I looked in the mirror this morning all I saw was the Blue Screen. There's a hex dump message where my forehead used to be. But it was all worth it ... and the real payoff is thinking somehow I might've made Jared proud.