The Computer Drama

God, if I can use my computer to crack open beers, maybe I'd feel a bit more mellow and less pissed off at this piece of crap. Before I go on any further, if you don't know already, I'm not exactly a computer expert and don't know much about computers beyond the basic stuff.

This horrid tale begins with my CD-ROM drive no longer functioning. Now my computer is a little more than five years old, but for some reason, it can't even play DVDs and I've been thinking of getting a DVD drive for a while anyways so this gave me an excuse to get a CD/DVD drive combo that all the new computers now have. So I skipped along to the neighbourhood Future Shop, a place where they over-charge you for the same metal crap you get everywhere else. Now I'm aware of the red-uniformed vultures (also known as salespeople) who prey on computer idiots like me. They had an internal drive for $60 and an external drive connected via USB cable for $70. Ohhhh the external drive, what a beautiful thing, what a wonderful thought! I must admit, my pulse quickened at the thought of not having to open up my computer and mess around with the inside, which always makes me uneasy. But... (there's always a but) the thought of paying seventy bucks is not a very appealing thought. So as usual, I asked around a few friends who were better with computers. They advised me to get an internal drive since it would be faster and to go to this store that sells everything factory-direct. So I went there today and got an internal drive for $25. I thought "This is great! Same product for a fraction of the cost!" Boy...this is where the trouble began. I have a HP Pavillion 7917 with its stupid goddamned plastic outercase and a spare space for an extra drive. So first, I started off with trying to take my original drive out. For some reason, one of the screws just wouldn't come out no matter which screwdriver I used. So I, I decided to put the new drive in the spare space. There's a metal covering in the spare space so I guess people won't accidentally stick things inside their computer. But getting that piece of metal out... I think the scratches on my hands and that splotch of blood that's still on the inside of the lid explains the story very well. Afterwards, I still couldn't stick the drive in because there wasn't enough room so I had to unscrew some things. So I stuck the drive in and screwed the rest of the components back in. I figured, finally, the easy part has come: installing the drive. Now this is the part where I think that whoever designed the packaging must have very low I.Q. THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL WAS ON CD-ROM!!! If my CD-ROM drive was working, I wouldn't need to buy another fucking drive, would I?! The drive can't read the CD-ROM if it hasn't been installed. So I opened hardware manager. It said there was something wrong with installation. So I figured maybe I plugged the wrong plug in or something, so I shut off my computer and opened it up again. After switching the plug, I turned on my computer and had to wait 15 minutes for my internet security suite to load so it would stop blocking all my attempts at modifying the computer's settings. I tried installing: same message, wouldn't install.

Three hours worth of installation attempts later: the same result.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Woes Of Love And IM

You would think that all the new gadgets would make it easier to connect with people (ahem the male species), but after years of using said gadgets, I have concluded that this is a big fat lie that corporate companies have been feeding us. Think about this: way back when, the only way to communicate someone without actually talking face to face with them was to to send a letter. When they don't reply, you have millions of excuses. The guy delivering your message could have ran off with the post thinking that you sent money. His horse might have broken its leg and in a strange and long winding turn of events, the letter was never delivered. The messenger might have met bandits on the road and was robbed of everything, including your letter. Even when we fast forward a couple of centuries into a more modern mail system, lots of things could still go wrong. Cars broke down, boats sank, if you sent the letter "postage collect", maybe the person you're sending the letter to didn't want to pay for the letter and decided to return it to the sender instead. Now fast forward through a few decades, maybe you would send a telegram instead. Of course, a million other things could go wrong. The telegraph operator could have misinterpreted the message you wanted to send, for some strange reason, some weird technical difficulty might have prevented your message from getting through. Or when the person delivering the telegram might have lost it for some strange reason. Now lets fast forward to telephones. When telephones were first invented, every time someone called in one house in the neighbourhood, all the phones rang. Every household had a special ring so you had to learn to recognize your ring. That person might not call you because they're shy and they don't want the whole neighbourhood knowing that there's something between you two and its way too easy for other people to eavesdrop on your conversation. Now lets fast forward to emails. You might not get a reply to your email because for some reason, it got lost in cyberspace, or that person doesn't check their email inbox. The point is, in all the above ways of communication, there's always some excuse you can make to yourself as to why that person isn't replying to you, but with instant messaging technology such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, etc, there are no excuses you can make. You can see their status as clearly online and every time you message them and they don't message you back, you feel stupid and like you're obsessing over him or something.

As you can see, we were better off with the letters and the horses.

The Woes of Technology

Seventy dollars, thirty minutes of installation, hours of virus/spyware scanning later, my computer is now completely clean thanks to Internet Security Suite. Its not protected with firewall, unfortunately, this means that my internet connection is currently three times slower than before and it wasn't that fast to begin with. And I can't sign into my msn messenger account even after adjusting the program settings on firewall.

How I hate technology.

I Need Anti-Virus

Arghhh, there's some stupid virus on my computer, whenever I use the internet, after about a half an hour, the task bar and Start button disappears, reappears three seconds later with all my windows rearranged in different order. Then, two hours later, the screen will flicker and suddenly it will say that I'm offline, but my internet is still connected and it won't let me disconnect so I can start over. So I have to restart my computer. I tried downloading an anti-virus software this morning and it won't install, I don't know whether its my computer or the crappy software. I would dish out seventy dollars to get Norton Anti-virus, but I'm flat broke. I spent so much money in the past month just going out and shopping. Looks like I'm going to have to beg my parents for money or ask my friends to lend me their anti-virus software. Neither option sounds very appealing at all. At the moment, I really hate my computer and the internet.

Forums

I've been on a couple of forums and I have accounts in a few places and I've been on the internet for a while, but all this time, I've only been on the popular sites, the popular forums. So today, I decided to have a look at those forums with extremely few members and virtually no hits. I felt kind of sad going through forums with only five members, twenty posts, and the most members they've ever had online was two. I've always liked the idea of starting a forum where I'm the head admin and I have full control over the content of the boards, I set the rules, I can ban people, etc. But now, I don't think I'm ready for something like that. I mean, to start off with, I would need a group of people I trust to be staffers and help moderate. I don't like to go on forums where I discuss things with people I know personally, because that would be somewhat pointless. If I wanted to discuss something with them, I could always call them. So I would have to rely on e-friends. Unfortuantely, I don't know that many people on the internet and I don't want to rely on random strangers to help me. Also, I would probably have to be somewhat familiar with coding systems to help the boards run properly. And there's the biggest issue of them all. In order for a forum to be effective, I would obviously need members. Judging by the number of boards I saw today with less than ten members, I doubt that any forum I create would be a success. *Sigh* maybe someday...

More Computer Troubles

My internet wouldn't connect yesterday and for the most of today until a half an hour ago. I finally realized that the 'Help and Support Centre' on my computer never has solutions that actually solves the problem. So I sit in front of my computer all frustrated that I can't connect to the internet and soon even Limewire starts freezing on me and I can't even listen to music to calm myself down. I try calling my internet service provider, but the line is always unavailable or there's nobody to answer the call so I have to leave a message. What kind of customer hotline doesn't have call waiting?! What kind of crappy service is that?! I want to swtich my internet service provider!! I wanted to yell at the customer service people so badly even though I know its not their fault, but I couldn't even connect to there. I was so relieved when for some mysterious reason, it started working again. I never got a response from the customer service people. But I logged onto my HPFF account and found out that chapter 14 of Last Summer has been validated and I got 19 reviews in my inbox. That cheered me up a little, though I was quite amused when I was watching MTV Cribs while my internet wasn't working and they were showing this BMX rider's house. The guy thought Crystal Light was Cristal. He didn't get why people say Cristal is so expensive when he got a six pack of Crystal Light for three dollars. Sadly, he doesn't realize that Cristal is expensive because its champagne. This proves that just because he's rich, doesn't mean he necessarily knows more about extravagance than the rest of us.

Computer Problems

Argh, my computer is acting up again. Its been doing this for the past three days. In the beginning, everything is fine, after maybe an hour or so, the screen suddenly flickers and my start button and the bar disappears for about a minute. Then it reappears and all my windows are scrambled in different order. So everything is fine again, after another hour, the same thing happens except this time, the start button and the bar don't appear again and all of my desktop icons have disappeared too. The msn window that pops up when someone on my contact list signs in or I get a new email pops up in the upper left hand corner of the screen instead. The next day, when I turn on my computer, everything is fine again. I think I have some virus or spyware on my computer. Sometimes I really hate technology. Actually, its a bit more of a love/hate relationship between me and my computer. When everything works fine, I love it to bits, when it messes up on me like right now, I want to throw a brick at the monitor even though I know the hard drive is the one really at fault.

The Amusing World of Internet Explorer

Before I say anything else, I'm going to tell you that I'm a total internet addict. I go on whenever I can and stay on as long as I can. There are many reasons for this, one of them is because I like to see what people I don't know have to say about various issues and I like to discuss things with people that I've never met face-to-face before. Whenever I have a question, all I have to do is google and there's the answer. Plus, there's so many free games out there for me to vent my anger out on and of course, there's blogging. But one thing never ceases to amuse (sometimes annoy) me is the false sense of power that people (including myself) sometimes get when they're on the internet. I mean, I guess when you own a website, you pay for the domain registration fee, the hosting fee, and you spend hours doing your layout; you probably do deserve to make decisions to ban certain people from your site or write long posts with hundreds of swear words about people you dislike. But your power is limited to your site. What people do at other sites is none of your business. I mean, its the internet, you have the freedom of speech. Just because you're in a PMS state of mind doesn't mean you can go around blocking everyone for something they said at another site that you have no authority over. We go online to relax and have fun, not to watch our mouths and hide our opinions. Its not like you're the government or anything and even the government (at least where I live) doesn't go around censoring the media (including the internet). Now if the government can't tell me what I can or can not say, what authority do you people, who hide behind the safety of a computer screen and a username, have over me?