Computer Woes, In Which I Am Forced to Face the Extent of My Internet Dependency

Oy. This is painful. I’d always thought that, since I don’t surf the web or game or read a lot of blogs—because, lord knows, I can barely manage to read the few blogs I try to keep up with (with which. . . )—or, really, do much of anything online, well:  I thought I was safe from that addiction, that time-eater, that thing that steals people’s lives away from them. I know all about it, of course:  artists tell me about it all the time.
[Teaser:  we talk about This Very Thing in the next book!]
And I didn’t do those things, so I’m safe, right?
So, so wrong. So very, very wrong.
So I’m sitting out here Tuesday afternoon, working away, and my computer (whose name is Roland, in case you’re wondering, and in case I need to remember it next time I have to tell a member of The Geek Squad what it is, even when he very obviously doesn’t give a flying fuck what some old woman calls her PC) –Roland says, “rrrrrrrrr.”
Now, Roland has been saying “rrrrrrrr” to me with some random regularity lately, for, oh, the last couple months, maybe. Random regularity is when it happens randomly, with no pattern, but it seems to happen quite a bit. I’ll be working, and he’ll say, “rrrrrrrrr.” and I’ll figure he’s just working a little harder. Or maybe trying to remember more stuff for me. Or whatever it is he does, which is completely wonderful but not anything I tend to think a lot about in any technical way. You know?
So I didn’t really pay much attention. And then he said, “RRRRRRRR!!”
And I was all like, “?!”
Because this wasn’t the nice little Revving Your Engine at the Stop Sign to Be Butch kind of “rrrrrr.” Oh, no. It was the Engine Racing and Getting Ready to Explode and Kill You kind of sound.
And then he said it again, more loudly, “RRRRRRRRRRR!!”
And I quick-like-a-rabbit closed all the programs and googled “loud noise pc” and decided it must be his fans getting ready to go out. I shut him down, unplugged all the wires, set him in the floor and turned him over to The Ever-Gorgeous Earl, who is King of the Vacuum Cleaner in this house and who did a thorough job of sucking what was probably 14 lbs of dust and cat fur out of the vents.
I do not know this. I did not see it, and we (that would be King of the Vacuum and only very rarely sometimes I) vacuum the vents regularly. Randomly as well, however.
But I was still just the teensiest bit freaked, seeing as how the googling resulted in various dire tales of what can happen to your motherboard when your fans go out.
Things that involve the word “fry.”
So, pretty well panicked by then, I got my husband to load Roland into the car (no way I was going to carry it out of the house, out into the dangerous world, where I could easily be tripped by any one of the neighborhood cats and drop Roland to let him shatter into a bazillion pieces. Oh, no. Not I.)
So The EGE is driving, and I’m doing just the tiniest, most minor bit of obsessing.
Oh, screw that: I was losing my mind and obsessing like a crazy person. I began pointing out all the things I cannot do without a computer, from paying bills to, well, working. I went on in this vein for the whole trip across town. The EGE helpfully said that if the computer were actually dying, we’d just get another one. Or use his, which is actually newer than mine. Or use the laptop, which is very fancy, even with a webcam (that I don’t know how to use).
Wrong thing to say to someone in the middle of an obsessive rant.
“Get another computer?! Are you Crazy?! Do you have Any Idea how much work that would be? Downloading and installing everything from audacity to Skype to Windows Live-Writer to . . . .and I don’t even know where I GOT those things! How am I going to find them all again and download and install them all again and WHERE WOULD I FIND THE TIME?”
And then the wailing, “I don’t have time for this! I have things to do! Things I should be doing Right This Minute, instead of going all the way across town to let some adolescent open up my computer and spit in it!”
Because that’s what they do, you know:  they open it up and look at it in their unconcerned adolescent way while you’re standing on the other side of the counter, wringing your hands and feeling all like Carrie in that episode of Sex and the City where she gets the Sad Mac and wraps her laptop in her pashmina and races across town to have the geeky tech guy act all amazed because she didn’t Back Up Her Work.
Only not as young and cute, and sans the shawl. Plus I do back up—I save like a tic, and the external hard drive backs up, um, well, whenever I scheduled it to back up. Whenever that is. Hell, I can’t remember. But I did it, and it saves shit for me, OK?
And so, sensing my panic, the Tech Dudes get all cute with me, in their geeky Tech Dude form of humor, pretending to drop my computer on the floor and peering in and going, “Uh-oh” and then laughing like hyenas.
I said, “Ho. Ho. Ho. I’m laughing.” Evil little rat bastards.
They find nothing wrong with it. Roland says, “mmmmmmmm,” just a tiny little polite hum, just like he’s supposed to do. They look at me and then at each other. You know. They suggest that they could give it the Squeaky Clean something-or-other, and they tap the computer in its Hidden Place, the place where, I now believe, The Daemons live. You know computer daemons, much like the daemon that sat in the head of the alien jeweler in Men in Black (I or II, I certainly can’t remember). As you might be able to imagine, I have my own ideas about what daemons actually are and what they might look like.
But never mind. They take the computer away to a back room, where we Are Not Allowed to Go, and clean it. I suspect that they take it into the loading bay, set it on the floor, and smoke a couple cigarettes. Then they take the back off, spit into the innards, and close everything back up. Then, in a couple weeks, the tobacco-infused spit will eat into something in The Hidden Place, and things will happen, and you’ll come back and have to pay, instead of the $29.99 Squeaky Clean charge, the full $79.99 Diagnostic Fee. Plus a hefty Find & Repair Fee. Plus a Now You Grovel Fee, of course.
Whatever. We bring Roland home, I set him back in place and hook up all 5,735 wires and cables and cords and turn him on. He goes through all the preparatory stuff and then says, “mmmmmmmmmmmm.”
And I smile and go to bed and all is Right With the World.
And I get up the next morning and come out to check e-mail, as I’m waiting to hear from one of my editors, and Roland won’t go on-line. I look up at the modem, and damn if I have no lights.
If you’re not familiar with this, here’s the deal:  I have clearwire, a wireless ISP, and I have a modem that sits on a shelf and connects via a cord to the internet phone modem, the router, and, ultimately, Roland. There are five little green lights on top of this modem, and I live and die by these lights. If all five are glowing brightly, we have Great Signal Strength, and things should be fast and zippy (more about that, though, momentarily). If we have four, not so great. Three sucks. If there are only two lights or—god forbid—just one:  I’m screwed. Something's wrong,and woe be to me if I need to do anything online. I have never, ever had no lights at all, though, and so I start checking stuff. When I finally give in and call tech support and tell her what I’ve tried, she says, ever-so-gratefully, “Thank you so much for doing all the trouble-shooting for me already.”
“Trouble shooting.” Yeah. We just call it “checking.” We’re very good at Checking. I unplugged and re-plugged everything. Unplugged and waited the requisite 10 seconds. All that stuff that we’ve gone through a million times, on the phone with tech support.  But still no lights. None. Nada. Zilch.
She says they’ll send me a new modem and that, since I’ve called so early, it will go out that day and get here the next day. So I prepare for 24 hours with no internet access. Piece of cake, right? Sure, I have no phone service, either, but I’ve already done this week’s interview, and I have the notes and the digital recording, and I’m set to go.
Only no. This is the part where I find out exactly how bad things actually are. I start the work on the interview and need to look up “Haystack,” as in the art school, to find out
--its full name
--its location
--when it was founded
--its purpose
In rapid succession, I find I need to look up other things, as well:
--the correct spelling of Joanne Mattera’s name
--the exact title of her book
--how to spell “fayum”
--more information about fayum portraits
--the date of The Textile Biennale—French? Swiss? Who knows about the spelling, either?
These are not the kinds of things I can find in my handy-dandy encyclopedia. Oh, sure, I could take my laptop and its charger, go to Starbucks, pay some fee, connect there, and work.
Only I can’t work where it’s noisy, where people are making noise and asking questions and visiting. I need to work HERE, damnit. And it’s only 24 hours, right? So I just make notes in the manuscript, places I’ll go back to and fill in later. Thursday, when my new modem arrives.
Only it doesn’t. I wait all damn day Thursday, working and stitching and going out periodically to check and see if the UPS guy has left it on the porch. Nope. Not Thursday.
Friday morning I call clearwire. They sent it Wednesday morning, overnight. I just know they’re going to give me a tracking number and tell me to go online and check the status. I’m just WAITING for them to do that.
Remember the line from The Kings of Comedy (I can’t remember which guy, but I love him a lot) says, “White people will come into a theater late and go, ‘Oh, I hope nobody’s sitting in our seats.’ Black folks will come in and go, ‘I wish someone would be sitting in our seats.’”
I’m all wishing, let me tell you. I’m ready for it. I’m ready to say, “Gee, you know, I’d be more than happy to go on-line and check the status of the modem you sent me Wednesday that was supposed to arrive yesterday but hasn’t, but I can’t, because I. Don’t. Have. A. Modem.”
Alas. I didn’t get to say a word. She checked. The modem was delayed in Dallas “due to weather.”
OK. This is running on forever, isn’t it? Cut to the chase:  the modem arrives last yesterday, about 7 pm. I set it up, hook everything up, try to get 5 lights. I can get only three, but that’s enough to download e-mail and find all the things I missed:  things several editors needed done as soon as possible. A glitch in payments caused by my paypal account still having the old credit card info, since I didn’t want to input the new one until I could see if it was going to transfer the raised limit that was supposedly granted me by the transaction that I suspect was the cause of the credit card fiasco in the first place. A notice to come pick up some paper at the printing company on Friday before noon. A note that one of my father’s brothers, one of my favorite uncles, died on Sunday. I had not seen him since high school, but I knew where he was and kind of how he was doing. I have his grade school photo right here on my bulletin board.
What I realized is that this technology has taken over my life. On the one hand, it’s made things a lot simpler:  I get phone messages and news alerts, mail and notes—everything by e-mail. I pay bills and order supplies, I send in work and get assignments—all online.
On the other hand, it’s made it virtually impossible for me to do any of those things without the computer. I have no idea how to make a payment for my internet service without access to the internet. I can’t check my bank balance or order books without it. It’s kind of scary, when I think about it.
The good thing was that I got a ton of stuff done during My Days Without the Internet. The EGE and I spent two hours going through all his various photo cards, weeding out photos and moving the rest to the external hard drive. I got three pieces ready to stitch and then did a lot of stitching on one of them. We spent hours out on the front porch (never mind that it’s been over 100 degrees—we drank a LOT of fizzy water).
Well. So I’ve been thinking about technology, my dependence on it, its benefits and perils. And then this morning I sat down and faced the fact that clearwire just isn’t doing it for me. The lights aren’t lighting up in great enough numbers—they’re all shy and un-friendly with each other—and things are very slow. I called tech support once again, and damn if I didn’t spend two hours of my Saturday morning on the phone with the nice young man there trying to solve this. I have Packet Loss, apparently, and in his analogy, used to explain relative internet cruising speed to someone who seems to remind him a lot of his mother, I am driving around in first and second gears, when I need to drive in 3rd gear. Fourth, he tells me, is impossible unless I’m living directly under a clearwire tower, which is where the metaphor breaks down and falls apart, not unlike the engine of a car that’s been driven all over town in first gear. Which may well have been what Roland was trying to tell me Tuesday when he kept saying, “RRRRRRRRRR!”
So now (and I’m winding down here, much to your relief, I’m sure) I’m looking for another ISP. I want cable, and I want fast and reliable. The ones people recommend—Grande Communications, Time Warner—are not available here. The ones I could get—AT&T, Suddenlink—don’t have such good reviews. I need to make some kind of decision before I leave next weekend. Grrrrr.
Anyway! (she said brightly) That’s my story. I’m sure there’s a cautionary tale in there somewhere, something about not putting all your eggs in one basket, or old ways being the best ways, or the importance of trying to find ways to live off the grid, or something. Whatever. All I know is that I’ve worked all day today, trying to catch up and make up for lost time. If the internet really saves time and speeds up our lives, why did I spend my Saturday morning talking about upload speed and packet loss and not even making a dent in the things that need to get done?  And then all of my Saturday afternoon doing those things?
Time for a walk. A nice, natural activity that doesn’t require anything except a good pair of shoes. And a bag of cat treats. And a long-sleeved shirt. A hat. Anti-UV sunglasses. Long pants. A pad and pen for taking notes. . . .