Welcome to the 21st Century

I may be a self-proclaimed techno-idiot, but I did manage to make it through college. And I do spend my days working on my computer. But the truth is, I’m not a gadget kind of gal. I have no desire to have phones that play music and games or find the newest fusion restaurant. I’ve just recently learned how to text. Seriously. It’s just not something that appeals to me. But I’m being forced into the 21st century and I’m less than pleased with this development.

It’s my computer. *sigh*

I’ve had this desktop for nearly 10 years. That means I’ve watched operating systems come and go and I’ve been pretty smug that mine has never crashed (and I’ve had no desire to get the biggest, fastest or newest). I know exactly where the buttons are to do any operation on my computer. My hard drive could be compared to a doctor’s office … various rooms filled with file cabinets overflowing with files filled with documents.

But … the little men in my computer are totally overwhelmed. When I ask them to retrieve something for me, they roll their eyes, give me that “are you serious?” look, shrug their shoulders and run into the bowels of my file rooms to retrieve whatever it is I’ve asked for. What this means is it can take a reeeeeeaally long time to pull up a picture or a document. And if I ask them to do two things at once … well they have an apoplectic fit, create a committee to discuss it, make decisions on how they’re going to split the duties THEN they head and out actually perform the multiple tasks.

So I knew it was time to replace my old friend. I’ve been talking about it for over six months. Mr. Nina finally got so sick of me complaining about the speed of my computer that he took me by the hand, drove me the three hours to the big city and pushed me kicking and screaming into Best Buy and made me tell the nice salesperson, Ryan, what I do for work and what I wanted my computer to do for me.

Mr. Nina didn’t talk much, except when it came to bytes and ram and caches. That’s where I get lost. Not because I don’t understand, but mostly because I don’t give a s**t. I mean the truth is, I don’t understand the difference between tera, mega, giga-thinga-ma-bobbers. And it’s only because I’m a visual person. I understand centimeters and how that relates to kilometers, but I can see them. Memory isn’t something you can “see”. (Watch my blog for the next installment of this computer discussion at the end of the week.) Anyway, I digress.

After we’d gotten it down to two or three models, the two of them decided which computer was the best bang for the buck. About three hours later, after they’d added my email program and the office suite … because Microsoft is looking to squeeze out all your pennies by not including the things everyone uses … we walked out of the store. And if Little Boy Blue hadn’t been home this weekend it would still be in the box two days later. As it is, it’s temporarily set up on the coffee table in my office. The thought of trying to transfer 10 years worth of stuff onto the new computer is just too overwhelming.

Not to mention I have some programs that are throw backs from the early 90’s that won’t transfer over. And these are programs that I love. My bookkeeping program that holds both personal and business expenses and income, a photo program and a card making program that I use for my promotional material and now, the new Windows 7 doesn’t have the movie maker program I use to make book trailers.

Yeeeeah, I so don’t want to do this. I know. I know. Give me this week, I’m working myself into it very slowly.