From 1996 to 2001, I was owned by an HP computer. You read that correctly,the machine required that I hire someone to tend to its whims and sleep outside so there would be room for its manuals and software in the warm, cozy house. I grew up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when authority figures were respected and obeyed, so, when the HP said, "Jump!," I asked, "How high?" Then, after I managed to finally stop trembling, I could sit on my stool and resume typing. In early 2001, my tutor attempted to install a second hard drive; the HP went into a rage, gigantic in proportion, frothing from the CD slot, and attempting to grab onto me like a giant metal leech, while alternating between flashing ugly messages and becoming completely catatonic. So, I donated it to a local senior center. Sometimes, late at night, I hear a delivery truck, wares clanging about in its bed as it makes its way down the road in front of my house and, before I am fully awake, I think, much like Freddy Kruger, that the ol' HP has come back to even the score.
But, I digress. Off to CompUSA I went and said to the twelve year old that offered to assist me, "I want a computer that your great-Granny could operate." Now, all that this machine does is e-mail and web surf; it is operated entirely by "msn," which, much like a father figure, imposing and all-knowing, I thoroughly trust to guide me and never betray me. There is no software or hardware and I think I love it. And, after two years, changing the cartridges in the printer hardly frightens me at all anymore. I am so proud of myself.
So, I sign on to get my Bernese e-mail and a fellow New Englander, not formerly from Detroit, as am I, sends me a note stating that my post was grabbed by aliens who tampered with it before releasing it to the list. I break into a cold sweat and begin to panic.
And, it appears that my simple and sweet machine is experiencing an identity crisis, warming up to hotmail, attempting to join a cyber inner circle of sorts, much like the one to which I have aspired, socially, for years. My stomach actually begins to churn. I make a quick trip to the bathroom. One day, at my wit's end, dark circles under my eyes, I stop trying to convince my 'puter that it must relinquish this hotmail fixation, and it, in turn, happily sends a message to our list.
You must log onto www.hotmail.com you think it's that easy, do you? Hah, hah, hah, hah... A page then appears asking you for your password; another dash to the commode when I first saw this. What password??? SOB!
Well, I DID select one when I signed onto msn service for the first time so I tried that and, lo and behold, it worked! GASP! After my heart began to beat normally again and I wiped the perspiration from my eyes, I resumed random tapping on the keys and was taken to a page where I could compose messages and the rest, as they say, is history!
Trust me, if I can do it, then so can you; I am the one for whom the computer gurus write the "Idiot" books!
Lisa Allen
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