A Room with a Vista

(With apologies to E. M. Forster)

Stacy became a computer widow today. Actually, she became a widow at about 4:45 yesterday afternoon when I drove home and met the very nice DHL dude who delivered my new Dell. I finally broke down last week and sprang for a computer upgrade. I got tired of waiting for two minutes every time I'd hit "save" in Word, or (heaven forbid), switched back or forth between Word and Internet Explorer. It was the random 30 second pauses that occurred every two or three minutes, apparently uncorrelated to anything I would be doing, that would drive me into a silent fury.

The new box is pretty heavy duty - I decided I wanted something that would be usable for five to seven years, so I nudged a couple of features up on the performance scale. It has Vista on it instead of XP, so I was concerned that I might just be taking a step backward, but so far all my previously used software has loaded fine and there have been no show-stoppers.

I spent all night and all day loading drivers, transferring files, updating software and trying to get my bearings. I'm not even remotely close to being done. I have that vaguely nauseated, slug-like feeling of the all-nighter technogeek hangover - that letdown of a night of Coke, Snickers and wasabi pea snack mix. I'm groggy and entombed in tunnel vision. I think I have children because I keep getting slimy pokes with what I think are fingers, but I've really not made much effort to pull away from my primary focus to verify.

Before I get lots of scolding emails, I should tell you that Stacy had a scrapbooking class on Thursday night - the night before VC day (Victory over my Computer Day), and I stayed home with the kids. While Stacy was out scrapping (or whatever you call it), I washed all the dishes, polished the stove top, vacuumed the carpets, doused the kids, and reclaimed the floor of the living room. Sure, it was simply to score brownie points to cash in today, but it worked like a charm.