Backwards Technology

Today I'd like to talk about the dung heap that is my work computer.

Seriously, it's a giant turd with keys and a mouse. Were it a person, it'd be Pigpen from the Peanuts. Were it capable of emitting an odor, it would smell like the bowels of a fat Italian man in summer who just ate a bowl of bran muffins mixed with refried beans, topped with curry. Were it an animal, it'd be a skunk. Run over. Dead on the freeway with one leg sticking up.

I don't quite know how to put into prose what a colossal piece of shit this thing is. Tell me how it is that a computer can crash while rebooting? Especially when it's rebooting because it just crashed?? This makes no sense. To me it's like a person who falls down, and then falls down again for no reason while trying to get up.

I think if I broke the damn thing open, I'd find one of those Flintstone toucans inside, banging away with a hammer and chisel and droning something in that Peter-Brady-my-voice-is-changing tone that all the Flintstone work animals had. Or, I might find a bunch of flaming buffalo pies. Or perhaps Legos. Or gum. Or a wire coat hanger.

OK, so it's sounding like my work computer is equivalent to a Ford Pinto. Maybe I can pry open the CPU and cook a steak on the motherboard.

But seriously, what is this thing...it's a Dell OptiPlex GX100 (a.k.a. Smell Crapitron 2000). It runs on Windows 98 (yes, that's 8 years ago now) and is pretty much capable of letting me surf some Web sites, check my e-mail and run the editing program we use. Speaking of which, that's a piece of crap too. Who ever heard of editing a newspaper using a friggin' DOS-based program? Every time I want to do something, I have to type in a series of codes. Just to open a story, I have to key in a code to get to the correct directory, then cursor down to the desired story, key in a code to open it, and then code in even more stuff for our design program to read.

Basically what I'm saying is that I had an easier time using the PET computer in second grade. Remember those? The keyboard was attached to the monitor and there was a big green cursor that blinked on the screen. I used to play Miser on those. Good times.

Anyway, I'm super glad that by the end of the month, we'll all have new computers here at the office. They'll have 17" flat panels, dual processors, sound cards (!!! ... yes, we don't have any right now, they were removed so we wouldn't download music or whatever and get "distracted" from our work...ha), and hallelujah, it probably won't take me 10 minutes to boot up when I start my shift.

Luckily, the executive editor says he'll probably let us trash the old CPUs Office Space-style. Sweet, I'm bringing Ryan's aluminum bat that day. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

Well, off for a game of Pong.