McCleary
By INGRID McCLEARY
OK, it's September already, and I still haven't fulfilled my New Year's resolution: This year I will buy a new computer.
Now, failed resolutions aren't anything new; I usually give up on them by January's end, but this time I intend to follow through with it. It's just that I'm having a tough go of it.
The truth is, I'm lost. The new computers intimidate me. Upgraded programs and faster speeds pop up every week. How do I know that what I buy today won't be useless tomorrow?
That I need a new computer is obvious. I first caught wind of this when I called a few stores looking for Apple IIe programs. They laughed at me. "You got a what?! Sorry, we don't carry spare parts for dinosaurs." How rude.
Next, my children came home with work they'd created on their school computers. "Look, Mom, bet your computer can't do this." They were right--though I wouldn't admit it.
Then my friends bought new computers, just for fun! I use mine for work (OK, 90 percent of the time), and they were using them to play bingo or hearts! At gatherings, they'd talk about their programming capabilities, and I felt like I was listening to them talk Pig Latin. I'd catch the Pig, but not the Latin.
The point was driven home when I watched a PBS program, "Triumph of the Nerds," a four-hour special on the creation and evolution of the computer. My Apple IIe was covered in the first 30 minutes. It was so old --in computer terms--they sounded like they were talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls.
How could my trusty computer be obsolete? I just bought it nine years ago!
I've subscribed to Writer's Digest for 13 years, and each month I read the computer column. I'm lost halfway down the article. Are they talking about computers or the NASA space program?
How did I get so far behind?
A friend, who knows I'm intelligent, took pity on me and gave me a computer book. The title? Internet for Dummies.
At first I balked. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? My computer was working fine. But in remaining faithful to the Apple IIe, I was stranding myself on an island.
So, I thought, compromise. Get a modem to connect to the world. Get online and email my work to various editors. At the very least, transfer the data on my antiquated 5.25-inch disks to another computer which would save the data on the current 3.5-inch disks standard for the eventual use on my new computer.
Made sense. So, I called computer stores. Again with the laugh.
Well, I showed them. I turned sleuth and secured a modem from a garage sale, a Super Serial card (to read the modem) from Fresno, a cable from one place and the software from yet another source (though without a manual). I hooked everything together, added the phone connection and--nothing. And without instructions, I was not only still on that island, but I didn't even have a message bottle to toss out to sea.
I want to dive into the World Wide Web, to surf the Internet, to fax important papers faster than a speeding bullet. (Notice how computer language uses descriptions like dive and surf for actions requiring only your fingertips and brain cells? Is it to make us forget that we're sitting on our butts during all this "activity?")
My mother warned me: Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.
I got it good. But that's another story.
Ingrid McCleary is a freelance writer who lives in Sunnyvale.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, September 25, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.