Some days I really wish I was born a computer nerd

Living in the Great White North has its disadvantages.

I mean besides the ones that involve three feet of snow and minus 40 temps.

Seriously, they exist.

The disadvantage du jour is my crappy frickin internet provider options.  Both companies servicing my area have rates which make trading my first born sound like a bargain.  And, after being taken to the financial cleaners month after month, I get the pleasure of having no service reliability.  Seriously.  None.

Well, at least every thing was working pretty well until around the start of the year.  Now despite multiple calls to the bastards masquerading as an ISP, buying new modems and cords and whatever they suggest, I still have no consistent internet.  Hence, I had to pack up my crap and hoof in to school early today to do my studying.  You can see how much I’m getting accomplished.

In all the free time I have to call and complain and request service calls they weasel out of providing I now have to worry about all my online classwork being delayed or obliterated when my connection just decides to go on an early spring break.

It makes those computer nerds with the insanely complex looking computer tech labs in their basements look like excellent marriage material.  I’d love to have my own server and the ability to surf the internet at light speed.  I would almost sell my virtue, if I had some left, for an in house Moss or Roy of my very own.

Instead, here I am sitting in a stairway at Stickittoyou U wondering why at in excess of $400 a credit hour they can’t provide sufficient quiet study areas and outlets for laptop adaptors.

Well,  don’t that beat all.  I rush to campus to dutifully do my homework and can neither find a quiet place to study nor a place to plug in my failing battery operated laptop.  I suppose I should have made my way to the nearest Carribou Coffee instead.  At least they understand the needs of wireless laptop users.  Funny how I never thought a $4 coffee would be so reasonable.

Time off for good behavior

Janie was a big girl and did her homework. In record time, too.

So now I feel I deserve some fun, but alas, but computer has decided to catch my plague. I may or may not be back soon….

Holey Smokes! It’s so huge! I can see my post from across the livingroom!

K. I’m not talking about Dr. Manhattan’s religion indicator. I’m talking about the behemoth I call my new laptop.

I had to purchase a new computer for school. Seriously. I didn’t choose to, it was a requirement that for certain classes I had to have certain computer functions, which my current baby didn’t have. So, I pointed my web browser to Tiger Direct. Actually, Leif did the shopping for me, taking much more delight in the project than myself. He found me a purty fancy new laptop, about twice as large as my little baby. And, it was on sale, which is an added bonus.

So, it arrived Thursday. Unfortunately I was coming down with a spud induced plague, so all I did was open the box and make sure everything was accounted for, insert the battery and plug it in to charge. Twenty-four hours later, Leif was all like: ‘WTF, you haven’t tried your new computer yet?!?

Because I didn’t want him to exploded from the anticipation of what the new Windows 7 operating system was like, I finally at 4pm turned it on and began the process of “Janie-fication” of my new computer.

It is a pretty cool computer, I suppose. However, I’m not in the slightest a techno-geek, so my main concerns are, can I read my blogs and will it let me access my banking accounts. Oh, and some email would be nice with the occasional photo editing ability. But darn it anyway, this thing is huge, twice the size of my baby mini netbook. While the bigger screen is rather awesome, the larger keyboard just doesn’t fit my tiny itsy-bitsy fingers. You have no idea the workout my spell check is getting.

Oh, and I also ordered a 16 gig zip drive. Way cool! I got all my music on one zip drive now, with room to spare. Tiger rocks. It was on sale too, for a mere $19.

It’s beginning to look a lot like vjtudynsd! (which is Christmas on a mini keyboard….)

Let’s hope I see you on the flip side

Well, my computer still has the plague.

I’ve tried everything I know to do, which admittedly isn’t much, except running the recovery program.

I have spoken to a couple of computer repair geeks, and short of actually looking at my baby they say it will probably run between $75 and $100 to fix what is most probably a virus.

So, before I drop almost half what I paid for my little netbook laptop in the first place, or just, in disgust, purchase a new one, I’m going to be brave and shove the scary huge atropine needle directly into the proverbial heart. I’m going to attempt to run the recovery program and reinstall the factory defaults myself.

Hopefully, I’ll be back shortly. Unless I ruin things more.