(Originally published in The Plain Talker, February 2006)
Though I have a definite preference for the "good old days," I'm not a techno-phobe. Life is better with electricity, running water, penicillin, Nyquil and frozen pizza, though I do believe that everyone ought to make frequent escapes from those "finer things in life," so that they can better understand what the finer things really are.
There are few modern marvels that I do without, though I sometimes find myself behind the times. My television was near top-of-the-line when I bought it… in 1985; flat screens, plasma displays and HDTV were still not close to being consumer-ready back then. And 1985 is when I got my current stereo system, though it didn't come with a CD player; I had to add that later, and I've added newer components as the old ones died.
My computer isn't cutting-edge either, but whose is? After all, computer technology is expanding so fast that you can buy a top-of-the-line model, and it will be obsolete before your credit card has been approved. And until very recently, I still used a dial-up internet connection; I upgraded to a high-speed connection only because the newest way for musicians to submit themselves for consideration to the series I help run is in the form of the Electronic Press Kit; listening to their music with my dial-up connection was not good enough. So I upgraded to a high-speed, always-connected service that didn't interfere with my telephone; it was so modern, I felt like George Jetson.
All of this came to a head shortly after Christmas. One of the gifts I received was an iPod; though these tiny little music machines have been around for a while, this was my first. I eagerly installed the software onto my machine so I could begin to enjoy my new gift; things didn't exactly go the way I had planned. It seems the operating system on my computer was so old that the iPod didn't recognize it; Windows 98 wasn't all that long ago, was it?
So, I had to update my operating system. In a fit of modernism I completely bypassed Windows 2000, and moved right into the 21st century, with Windows XP. I installed it, and watched helplessly as smoke and sparks began to shoot from the back of my computer.
Well, not really, but almost. So many of the programs that I had on the computer were so old that they didn't work with Windows XP; they were as outdated as Windows 98 had been, but that made everything perfectly compatible when I was still using 98. Not anymore.
The first thing to fail was my ability to connect to the internet; since internet service is the second-most important reason I even have a computer, that was bad. (The most important reason, of course, is so I can write this column. And since I now submit it via email…) I had to decide whether I needed the internet or the iPod more, and since iPods are useless without the internet, the decision was easy. I un-installed Windows XP, and reverted to Windows 98.
At least, that's what was supposed to happen. But it didn't. Though most of Windows 98 re-installed, certain parts of it did not. Important parts, it turned out, some of which I needed to be able to connect to the internet. Not good, not good at all.
Fortunately, my wife's computer is completely separate from mine, so I was able to use her internet service. (She uses dial-up; ha! Or, as we say in the computer world, LOL.) I emailed someone who should have been able to help, and sure enough, after two weeks, I had re-re-installed Windows XP, and was able to connect to the internet for several seconds at a time.
Obviously, things were still wrong, and when he came over to see the problem in person, we learned what had happened. It turns out that my super-cool, always-connected internet had not failed; only my ability to actually log on and use it was gone. Another failure was my anti-virus protection. Essentially, I had been logged on for two weeks, and my computer had been bombarded with every computer virus out there, with no way to protect itself.
I don't know how familiar you are with computer viruses, but apparently creating them and unleashing them on the world is a way-cool thing for some people to do. It's the modern day equivalent of filling a bag with dog poo, placing it on someone's porch, setting it on fire, and ringing the doorbell. But instead of hiding in the bushes and laughing as the homeowner stomps on the poo-filled bag, these people jump out of the bushes and smash the homeowner in the shins with a baseball bat. (The nastier viruses then force-feed the contents of the bag to the homeowner.)
Once we knew what the problem was, we could start to solve it. My job was to sit back and watch, and to put new music in the boom box when the time came; I think I did my job more than adequately. And so did the friend who got my machine back up and running, so I once again am part of the 21st century. Now if I could just figure out how to work this danged iPod…