My Hero

Technology sucks!
Ok, ok. Really it doesn't.
I don't have any desire to go back to the old way, the typewriter. Gads, what a thought! I remember. One error and redo the whole damn page. Noisy old things. I think I threw mine out. Haven't seen it in years.

So, we really do have it lots better.

But....
I've been having issues with my computer for the last couple of weeks. Maybe it's getting too old. It needed spring leaning badly, and since then it's been cranky.
I turned my computer on yesterday. It hesitated a long time at the loading screen. The mouse didn't turn red. The keyboard flickered.
And I got a running green screen with strobes of rainbows in the background.
Pretty neat to look at.
So, I turned it off, counted to ten, swore - I mean really. I depend on this thing to keep me updated about the world. And to write.
So, on it goes again and I get these pretty colours, diagonally, before the computer whines at me about some error 'display driver stopped working and recovered version.  Off through a string of numbers.
Not so good.
I reboot, press F8, you know, the regular process, ask it to fix itself and wait.
By now I've had two cups of tea - my preferred waking beverage.
Half hour later I check and it says it can't fix the problem. I try booting in safe mode. And it works for a while. Long enough for me to get a bit of my world fix and check some emails.
Then I get the black screen of total death.
I try rebooting. And nothing!

Panic city. My life is on that computer. Yes I back everything up. I have thumb drives cause where I live I can't reach the cloud. But that's not the same.
I bite my nails for a little longer, waiting impatiently for my desk side support (DSS) to wake up. The big gun gets up first - the hardware/software/security GURU, my husband.
I cannot wait for my kid, so I lay the problem out and ask if he can fix it.


He pokes around before saying my video card is toast. Well, not toast, but the fan has died so it won't play anymore. We can't even load the bios now. It's that not happy.
Now I try to wake the DSS to ask if we have a spare video card anywhere in the house - I wouldn't know. I have my own stuff.  He isn't pleased. And informs me we don't.
I relay the news, asking if I should make the long trek ( an hours drive) to town (really the city) to find a card that the guru wants. And he starts looking into whether his video card will even plug into my motherboard. It's an old motherboard. We believe in trickle down acquisition here. The guru's computer always gets upgraded first.  Now that two of my kids' have left home, I'm next in line for the displaced whatever - if it will fit.

As a sidenote, we are a family of packrats. I think at hoarding level 2 is our rating. But it can be a good thing. Because....

Somehow, we've kept my motherboard 'how to' manual. Why am I surprised? Not sure. I have manuals for things we no longer own - things that I've - horrors - thrown out. But I am surprised, because the guru doesn't always give me electronic manuals. He likes to hide them in his professional journals.

Anyway, he reads it and lo and behold! my motherboard has a built in video card. Wouldn't work for any of their games. But I'm not into mega gaming. I like the Civ games, Caesar,  a really old Alien settler game. Things like that. Nothing to stress a low-end video add-on.

Well, he reads out how we have to reset the motherboard so we can get into the bios and set up this video application. The bridge is a very tiny blue plastic thing, in an awkward place deep in the bowels of the box. Guru can't see to pull it out. So daughter gets the needlenose pliers, lays on the floor - yeah, it's a big box and I refuse to have it on the desk - worries out the battery, pulls this tiny blue bridge off and promptly loses it. Ten minutes later I find the tiny blue thing - I swear it isn't a full centimetre big. She counts the prongs, resets it, plugs it all back in we count - it says 10 seconds - she puts it back to its original place, replaces the battery, plugs the box in and guru pushes start.
Nothing!
So they try again, keeping the blue bridge on the alternate prongs longer, may 25 seconds, reverse the process and try to reset again.
Yes Houston, we have life.
Now guru has to fiddle with all the settings, muttering to himself about some whining the computer is making about some app that is flaky. So he goes to his computer to look that up, finds out that there is a process to take that application off, but it's incredibly tedious and he says it will take forever.

We're up to five hours to fix this thing. By now desk side is awake, interested, and they are exchanging those acronym filled conversations where I can pick out one word in fifteen, I swear.
I'm jumpy as I haven't had my writing fix yet today. I'm hovering and making them nervous. So I'm banished. 'Go read a book,' guru orders. I wanted to, but the book I want to read is mine, in the computer, that I'm editing so it's at least somewhat error free before it goes to my publisher.

Finally. Finally I'm called. "Try it. It should work.' Gads I hate those words.

And it does work. Looks normal. Sounds normal. Everything is there. I sit, open everything, just to check, read the last thing I wrote, play a few hands of solitaire and turn it off. Much to the dismay of my guru and his apprentices, bit the DSS and the grunt. After all their hard work.
I'm too jumpy to write at all. I can't even look at the story.

But hey. I realized he's my hero. Guru fixed the thing. He made it all better. Now I can get up at my ungodly hours, happily write while the rest of the world is sleeping, without disturbing anyone.

He is My Hero.