Technology

In four years i have had three laptops.

And i almost lost another one today.

Let me tell you how it all began.

I went off to college and spent a miserable freshman year, writing 25 papers in one semester and wanting to die more and more every day. I even became a 'that girl'.
"oh.. stacey? is she that girl who showered at 3 in the morning?"
yes children, that was me. I was a hard worker. And so my computer was forced to be as well. But it was not my computer, rather my brother's old laptop from college, now it its 5th year.
The screen wouldn't stay up, so i kept it closed and used a docking station so that i could connect it to a desktop monitor. not sure why i didn't just use a regular desktop pc then...

But anyway, after a year of hard work, i moped home from class one day before finals season truly began only to find that my computer had taken its own life.

Yes you read that correctly. It just couldn't handle it anymore. It had been five years and just when it was ready to retire and relax, i forced it to churn out papers and to constantly hold onto long rambling away messages on aim. It just couldn't take it anymore. And so it was gone. And all i had left of it was a blue screen of death.

I called my brother because i don't know how to do anything with computers. He made me hold some button down. I am alone in my room with the door closed trying to fix something i don't even understand in the first place. I press this button. A shrill, terrifying beeping alarm begins! "AGGGGHHHHHHH!!!" i scream "WHAT IS HAPPENING?! oh my god. is this going to explode? did i hit the red button you aren't supposed to touch? what do i do? what is wrong? how do i fix this? i am so scared..." And Scott just laughs at me, as friends from 3 doors down the hall come running to my room to see if i am ok.

i was ok. but my computer would never be the same. it seemed the hard drive crashed . and the motherboard broke. and the men at the store said we could pay 500 dollars for them to attempt to retrieve information. I wrote all my final papers on some crazy archaic program that ran off a CD. i felt like i was in Ghostwriter. It seems a blur now. But that computer and i had been through a lot. And frankly, i was a little upset that it took the easy way out and i couldn't.


Sophomore year. My parents decide to get me my own laptop. So i get a Dell Inspiron full of hopes and dreams. It was so lovely having a laptop that i could actually use on top of my lap.
But this charade would not last long.

One day my computer screen stopped coming back up after the black screensaver came up. i hit the moush, the keys, closed and opened it. nothing. i had to restart. I could not figure out why this was happening, but i tried to deal with it. And it was rare. i could handle it.

Then one day, I was just sitting in my dorm room in Loyola talking about something ridiculous with Caroline when it happened.

what 'it' is is hard to explain. i used to have a video of 'it', but i think that has since been lost with the computer. I will try to make you understand... the screen all of the sudden had turned into tiny rectangles of alternating color, all piled on each other. a little like the bricks in Mac Brick Out from 4th grade (if you played that too). But this mosaic of messed up junk was not happy just showing up...no....it then proceeded to have a seizure of some sort for an infinite amount of time. they just shook, and slid past one another, until i restarted it.

It was the most absurd thing i had heard of happening to a computer. Scott agreed. He had never seen it before, which is why i had to take a video of it for him to understand. all in all, it was a freakish occurrence that probably has only ever happened to me and the 5 other people in the world who have ridiculous experiences nonstop.

This is when Scott spent many many hours on the phone with India. we sent my laptop to them. they sent it back. it flipped out again. they asked us to send it back. scott said no thank you. they said ok, we will send you a new one.

Which brings us to this computer on which i lovingly type. This computer is a little over two years old. It has been to London with me. It has recorded countless blogs and photos there. IT is has been to more websites than you can imagine, and has acquainted itself with facebook and youtube like no other computer you know.

But it was sick.

Really sick. In fact, we thought it was the end today. It has been showing signs of weakness. Like the fact that the battery will only last 8 minutes, and has been this way since the middle of senior year, so i must always have an outlet. It went through a rough patch over thanksgiving last year, but we worked through it. and it was the reason i don't really let anyone touch my computer anymore. after never having viruses the whole time, i suddenly had a trojan back door virus (hehe) and 20 others. but that is neither here nor there.

So scott set to work on this, as we had established it would either be a hard drive problem or a windows problem. I was upstairs checking my mail on one of the home computers ( there are two in the cellar. i dont really know what they do), when all of the sudden it begins to sound a little like the end of the world. I high pitched beeping was sounding. A slightly musical, yet terrifying alarm rang. Then the home phone rang. And the little white dog started barking. All we needed was for our washing machine to unbalance, and for me to start chanting 'the system is down' and you would have the best techno song the world has ever heard. the music video would include shots of the system check that kept coming up FAIL! in bright red. it would be sweet.

have no fear, loyal reader (and you must be quite loyal to be this far down this drivel), for this laptop story has a different ending. a happy one. for now at least.

Scott gets it to start working, seemingly, and calls me in to sign in. A pesky little pop up comes from the bottom right hand corner " updates ready for installation". "Pssh stupid updates. i hate you," i say as i close the irritating window with no second thought.

"What are you doing?" scott asks. "why did you not update? "
"oh . i hate updates. i dont do it. and itunes tries to make me update every day. no ! i won't do it! no i say! down with the man!"
"you're stupid. you are so stupid. this update says (technological phrase) #3. i am pretty sure we are on #4 and you havent updated to three. you are so stupid. everytime there is a big probelm in microsoft word or a bug or virus, they send out and update. you update. and then you are ok. you. do not update. this may be the problem. stupid"

ahem. so. the moral of the story is:
stacey molski should never interact with technology.

ever.

even if she wants to.

but she did have the same phone for four years and it was great and never had a problem and she kept really good care of it. but then she got a new one. because society and her phone plan told her to. and sometimes it opens the music player by itself and starts playing morrissey. yup.
help.