Time For A New...

“It’s like....” said Brandon C., Senior Technician at Computer Port, (motto “We know computers... we build them”) as he grasped for an analogy. “...well... think about cars. If your computer were a car, it’d be a Model T.”

I had finally decided, you see, to get a new computer- one to replace the circa 2000 unit that we’d been using since that noteworthy year. Not just an upgrade (that’d been done twice, once in 2005 -an event immortalized in one of my best rhyming poems- and once in 2007) but a state-of-the-art repacement.

I’d been putting it off, ’cause the old one still runs. It still works. Well enough. Almost.

Of course we’d replaced the keyboard and the mouse a couple of times, and most recently the monitor. Sure we’ve had to stick an untwisted paperclip into a secret portal to coax the disc drawer open for a while, and the speakers are (and always have been) pieces of junk, but it took the death of the honorable HP932C printer to get me thinking that perhaps we could use a new processor as well.

So I dug up the Computer Port receipt from 6/10/2000 which itemized the components of our now (beyond) obsolete ensemble, for the purpose of showing the technician what we had been working with. After registering surprise that our neolithic (Intel Pentium III 600 MHz) processor was still was still functioning, he cheerfully set about helping us to ’build’ our new system, starting with an Intel Core2DuoE8400 3.00GHz Dual Core Processor.

Consequently, if I seem out of touch for a few days in the near future, it’s because I’m in the process of transitioning to modern technology.

Here’s the poem inspired by the 2005 upgrade. It’s entitled (appropriately enough) “Upgrade.”

One day we said, "We just can't wait,
We mustn't miss a beat
We'll change our Windows 98
To one less obsolete.

I unplugged the tower from its wire maze
For an upgrade I did ask
The man said, "Three to five business days
It'll take to finish the task."

Computerless. At first it seems
An inconvenience small,
Then came the barely stifled screams-
Oh, no! Computer withdrawal!

No E-mail! Our palms did sweat
No solitaire! No internet!
Indeed, our longing got so bad
We even missed the pop-up ads!

Day after day our gaze would land
(We couldn't help ourselves)
Upon the bare computer stand
It's empty, lifeless shelves.

Three to five days long were past
When finally, it came at last
A joyful message on the phone
Hurray! Our baby's coming home!

So share with us our boundless joy!
We welcome home our favorite toy,
And hope with desperate hope and tears
That we won't need an upgrade for many years!
.