Oh, Mother!

My old Dell computer finally died on Saturday and as much I hated the damn thing, I have to admit I miss it.

It seems the mother board went south and now I finally have to get that new computer I’ve been threatening to buy for over a year.

The Dell had been giving me trouble for ages. There was a point where I was on the phone with tech support so often I could have run for prime minister of India. And that probably wouldn't have helped much.

They pretty much rebuilt the thing from scratch and repair people were coming to my house more often than the mailman. I even threatened to sue them at one point I was so furious.

On Friday I was uploading pictures from last Christmas when the thing crashed and refused to get back up.

So now the thing is dead, but my holiday plans are going to prevent me from getting a replacement until early in January. I don’t think it will be a Dell.

I went to an internet café in my neighborhood this weekend and it had this creepy kind of peep show feeling to it. The only thing missing was a few old guys in raincoats.

It's strange not being able to log on whenever I want to and look up something on the Internet. I lived a large part of my life without computers, but that is unthinkable now. When I was a kid, computers existed on Star Trek. Now we carry them around in our pockets.

But this experience has shown me that I spend--waste--far too much time on the web looking at one site or another.

I look at videos, movie trivia and, worst of all, I read the comment sections under legitimate news stories. Most of these comments are offensive, ignorant and downright stupid, but for some reason I keep reading them.

Maybe I can use this time away from the keyboard constructively, so that when I come back online, I'll use the computer only when I need it.

Today I also pulled the plug on our old home phone number. I haven’t been using that number and it was a waste to keep it, but it still hurt a little to have it disconnected. I was a teen-ager (or younger?) when we first got that 238 number and getting rid of it is yet another sign of time’s passing.

If you don’t hear from me for a while, don’t take it personally. I’ll be back online as soon as possible.

Have a great holiday!