Sep
30
I am a stay-at-home mom. I used to work in software companies with lots of computers. I taught people how to use them, I wrote training manuals about them, and, many moons ago, I fixed what was wrong with them.
I did alright. Way back when, I knew my way around a computer to fix any number of basic problems with a number of software programs, and could futz and faff around enough to make things happen that people didn’t know they could do.
Except with printers. GodDAMN, I hated printers. And they hated me. I thought I had them beat for awhile, and treated them all like an HP printers, and bent them to my will. But that was a very SHORT while, a very LONG time ago.
But I didn’t have to deal with printers much. Mostly it was software and servers and such. And I did alright.
Nowadays, though, my relationship with computers is mostly social or educational in nature. I have long since forgotten what I once knew, and leave the troubleshooting to BDH. And I like it that way.
EXCEPT.
Except for days, like today, when I go into work, where we have just moved to a new office space and I find the first task my boss has for me is… WAIT FOR IT!!…
Installing a new all-in-one printer-slash-scanner-slash-fax machine on what will be my computer.
My VERY OLD computer. Which is not even MY computer.
But I am the most tech-savvy person in the office, so heigh-ho, I grab cables and install CDs and away I go. Plug it in, and wait for it to plug-and-play do its own install, right?
Not so much. There is no internet connection yet. BUT, I have the install CD, so I pop that in and away I go. Install, install, install.
And then we get to the part of the show where you reboot to finish the install. Okay, so, watch me reboot.
Old computer shuts down, and then chugs back to life. At which point, one of the random bits of software already installed on this previously-owned-by-a-high-school-boy-home-computer computer gives me an error message. Apparently X software had Y memory error located at Z.
Whatever. Click OK.
I wait. And wait. And wait.
I grow impatient.
And I try to utz it along a little bit.
It doesn’t like that. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t want to do much of anything. It has ground to a halt.
So I do what any relatively confident computer user would do. I cursed it out. And then I punted the damn thing.
It starts up again. It gives me errors again.
And then it locks up like a warthog after a cheese dinner.
INSERT FOUL LANGUAGE.
PUNT.
Restart.
Lock up.
Cuss some more.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
So then I try to reach back into the dusty nether reaches of my mind and figure out what was wrong. I put the damn thing in safe mode. I disconnected things. I tried uninstalling shit. I tried reinstalling shit.
Mostly I just rebooted. Like, A HUNDRED FUCKING TIMES. I spent the better part of 3 hours just restarting the machine, over and over and over again.
And it just looked at me and froze up over and over and over again.
So, three hours later and with significantly less patience than when I showed up for work today, I shut everything off and walked away. And told my boss to get someone to fix it.
I felt defeated, a little. I used to know how to do this. But now, after years of neglect and way, way too many sleepless nights and Baby Einstein videos, my technical aptitude seems to have gone the way of the dodo.
I was defeated. By a PRINTER.
Colour printing, faxing, scanning little BASTARD.
But I don’t care as much as I used to. I did, for example, resist the urge to throw everything out the window.
So, although as I have gotten older, my memory may not be what it used to be… with age comes maturity, right?
At least, that is what I am telling myself.
Shut up.
