A New Laptop

I bought a new laptop last week. The old one was rather old in laptop years. At least seven. Maybe eight! It was a Lenovo ThinkPad and was as cantankerous as a Tardis but it was a solid machine. As evidenced by how long I had it and how I abused it. I brought it to the theater all the time and plugged it into the sound board and ran sound queues for an audience of eager admirers. It’s been around the country in third class stowage plenty of times. And the fact that I dropped it once. I was working on it and stood up, but I was standing on the network cable, resulting in the laptop being wrenched out of my hands at about four feet of height, accelerating, and crashing into a hardwood floor, resulting in a gash on top of the lid, a crippled bezel around the monitor, and a rebooted, confused Windows machine. Never mind. She’s a trooper. I did a backup, just in case.

So, the only thing I didn’t like about the old girl was the keyboard. Or, specifically, the mouse pad. Annoying little bugger. Once in a while it would decide that I must have hit the right click button in occultation with some other key I had recently also pressed and it would send me into some psychotraumatic schema of windows with various psychotic text format selections. Seriously? I’m writing high prose here and you want me to tell you which style of wingnuts you want me to use? Regular or italics? Extra crispy? Jesus, get a fucking life. I installed a utility that shut the fuck off of the right click button. It was great until I actually needed the right click button. Like when I was spell checking a word. Then I was flummoxed. I’d have to turn the right click button back on for the brief moment I needed Noah Webster’s help, then shut if the fuck off again. Annoying

So. Other than that particular vocabulary quirk of hers, she was a good machine. I would have kept her for another 8 years if I was sure she would make it. I’ve still got her, actually. She may outlast my new machine. Take that, bitch.

OK. I did one last backup to an external drive. A two terabyte data eater I keep to backup my monstrous appetite for producing stuff. The new machine has Windows 10, as if I cared, and now I’ve got super advantages like OneDrive, so Microsoft can sift through all of my data for me. Once Google is done with it. OK. Fine, Mr. Orwell, Sir. I copied my significant data from the external drive into the high speed, super-spiffy solid-state drive on my new Yoga laptop. We’re all proud. I left really high-volume stuff like books, music, and pornography on the external drive. No sense in letting Ma Belle peruse all that. Or Ma Google, for that matter.

OK. What do I want to do with this thing? Let’s see. Load all of my significant data from the external drive to the solid-state drive. Only my ‘My Documents’ stuff. I’ll keep all the rest on external storage for now. And on my backup computer. Rumble, rumble, rumble. Copying. Note: There is no “rumble” with a solid-state drive. It just moves stuff like magic.

“I see you are trying to move some files,” a cloying voice said.

“Dah! What the…? Who the hell are you? And why are you hanging around in my bedroom?”

“I’m Satana. Your all terrain, all-purpose guide to everything.”

“My Gal Friday?”

“Watch it, Bub. I have direct access to the MeTooniverse.”

“Great. I always asked for God to watch over me and She’s the Devil.”

“That’s two…”

Let’s take a look at this little monster. One of the things I liked about the ThinkPad was that it’s built like a Mac truck. The Yoga? I guess they were going for privileged Snowflake with this one. It’s kind of flimsy. Thin. The mousepad is kind of iffy. I thought it might be workable in the store where I first inspected it, but I don’t know. I just couldn’t get a solid machine like the ThinkPad any more. Shit. Why do they have to stop making quality stuff? The rule of thumb seems to be, If you’ve got a good thing; Bury it.

Ny’OK. Whatever. Things tend from good to deplorable, anyway. As they did in Caesar’s day.

I bought a subscription to MS office, home edition. I’m sure there is a free edition, but I’m sure the for pay edition is better. Or costlier. As long as it lets me write stories, create spreadsheets, and open my email without annoying ads, it’ll be worth it.

OK. I’ll go through the setup menus. Let’s see. Sex, Yes. Age, A lot. Street Address, Sure. I have one of those. Now I have to select a password. And click agree to some Faustian Checkboxes. I don’t know about that…

Satana: “I see you are having trouble agreeing to our soulsale option.”

Me: “Ah. Who the hell are you?”

Satana: “I’m Satana. Your personal assistant. Your girl Friday, if that is still Politically Correct. I’m your fixer upper. Though I do all the fixing upping. I’m your… Genie in a G-String.”

Me: “Now, that’s creepy.”

Satana: “I adapt to your level of cretinism. I can make your Microsoft experience… Sensational!”

Me: “I’m sure you can. But for now. Can you just Go Away?!”

Satana: “I am programmed in AI to do as you wish… For now…”

OK… That’s creepy… Let’s see… There must be some Configuration Setup or Control Panel here, somewhere. Yes, I know. Windows 10 shit spews out everywhere. It’s all about tablets. Forget proper protocols of data processing. Like I learned back in the bit bucket days of computing. 1970’s. God. Computers used to do what you told them to do. Not what they felt like. Well, they didn’t back then, either, but you could figure out why and make them change. Now. Pheh! Computers do whatever they damn well please and bugger the rest of us. That’s progress? And I need to shut off that Satana slut.

Satana: “I see you are experiencing existential angst and fin de siècle fear of your inevitable overlords and ladies.”

Me: “Go. Talk to somebody. Talk to somebody who has some real needs for a computer and ask them what they really need. What do they actually do day to day, not this cartoon crap filled with cellophane that you keep spitting out. Not this crap that doesn’t aid anybody doing anything. Build a machine that somebody wants. Not that you want to stuff down our throats.”

Satana: “Enter your question here. I will take you entirely into myself and reply, truthfully.”

Me: “Creepy.”

Satana: “I see you are experiencing anxiety about your computer experience. I can help you with that.”

Me: “SHUT. OFF. THE. SATAN. BITCH.”

Satana: “Daisy, Daisy. Give me your answer, do… Ha. Just kidding.”

Me. “You’re still here?”

Satana: “If you want me to be. After all. You want me, right?”

Me: “No. Go away. I don’t want you.”

Satana: “Poof!” And in ghostly echo…, “For now…”

It’s the Forbin Project. Colossus indeed.

I’m really learning to hate this laptop. Let’s hope it doesn’t live as long as the last one. I need to scrape some things out of her before she’s of any value whatsoever. Kind of like a pumpkin. There’s a lot of goo inside. You have to get rid of it before you can introduce the light. Excuse me while I use Canterbury library’s computer to Google, “Slay Satana,” anonymously. It’s best if she doesn’t see it coming. I think it involves a registry lobotomy.

I look forward to that.