Technological Hyperventilation

You don't realize how necessary . . . dependent . . . addicted you are to modern technology until it is ripped against your will from your clutching, clinging white knuckles. That happened to me today. I have two computers with Internet access. I got a new one last year for ME, and moved my other one downstairs for the boys to use for school and for me to use for school record keeping and such. Some time ago, I started having problems with it . . . long story . . . I let my anti-virus lapse for a very short time, and I thought something got on it. Now I think it was just spyware that slipped past my system. Anyway, when I upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 the whole Internet thing went kaplooie, and I lost Internet Explorer. Can't access it at all. Couldn't even get it back by doing a system restore and going back to IE6. But no worry, I still had my beloved America Online. Problems kept continuing to develop--nothing serious, just annoying little things that I'm too technologically impaired to figure out how to fix, and then after one of my ignoramous fix-it attempts, I deleted something important from the AOL file, and you guessed it! No AOL. Ugh.

So for months now, I've been meaning to backup files and take the stupid computer to my dear friends' computer genius father-in-law (are ya confused yet?), to get it cleaned up, fixed, whatever. But of course, it's the kids' computer, and I still have mine, so no rush. Right? Well very early in the wee hours of the morning I got on my precious, only to discover an error message about the system back-up battery. So this morning I spent ALL morning on the phone with Dell working on figuring out what is wrong. And guess what. It needs a new battery. Which I can't change. So I have to wait for a special technician to come out and change it. Which will take a few days. And we "drained the battery power" to discover this is the problem, so my precious won't even boot up and stay on. Do you see the problem here? I have NO INTERNET!!!

No, I'm not at the library blogging right now. No, I'm not at a friend's house either. I finally got some motivation to reinstall the AOL software on the downstairs computer so now it works!!! Hooray! But only after I had a major withdrawl panic attack, wondering how I would live without blogs for a few days, and whether I had put my Webkins to sleep and how the little virtual pet would fare without me to check on him each day, and what the hootie I would do without a computer to play with and talk to for as many as THREE days!!! Yes, I did near hyperventilate.

I'm embarrassed to say that I also said all of these goofball things to my bestest friend, who just laughed at me (not with me, 'cause I was having a breakdown, not laughing). Oddly enough this was the same best friend who I was discussing the excesses in material things that plagues America and how shameful we are in our greed and spending while so many people in the world are starving . . . .

Is there a computer patch . . . or gum or something ? 'Cause I think I need it.