Random Story – New computer problems

This is just an odd little story from my life.

My first three or four computers were secondhand.  One that belonged to a friend’s boyfriend worked fine for writing stories, but it didn’t have the set up to get online.  So around 2005 I decided I’d buy a new computer for myself.  There was a kiosk in the local mall where you could pick out what you wanted in a computer and they’d ship it to you.  I should have had them ship it to where I worked, but I didn’t think of that.

At the time, I lived five minutes from work, so I’d go home for lunch.  I went home one day to find a note from UPS that they had three packages for me and that they’d try to deliver again the next day.  The complex where I lived had six or seven apartment buildings and the next day when I went home for lunch, I saw a UPS truck parked in front of the third one from mine, so I pulled in next to it.  I waited for a couple of minutes, and when the guy came back out from delivering something I asked if he had anything for me.  He did, but only one package.  So I took it to my apartment and was really happy to have new … speakers.

I had to go to their pickup center or whatever to get the rest of my computer.  It was drizzling that day, and the one box that I think just had the monitor in it easily fit in my car.  But the other box with everything else didn’t want to go in the passenger seat.  No matter how I turned it, it didn’t want to fit.  I think I had to cut it open, take the keyboard and some other small things out, and crush the top of the box down before it would fit in my car.

Back in my apartment, I got everything set up.  I had my new, fancy computer on the left side of my desk, and my old, clunky computer on the right side.  All I had to do was transfer all of my stories.  For the previous ten or so years, I had used 3.5 inch disks.  When I was picking what I wanted for my new computer, I didn’t even think of adding a 3.5 inch disk drive because I just thought of them as standard.  So how could I transfer all of my stories from a computer not hooked up to the internet with only a 3.5 inch drive, to a computer hooked up to the internet with USB drives?

I took three or four disks and crammed them with as many stories as I could fit.  I then got in my car and drove the ten or so minutes to my local library which had a couple computers with 3.5 inch drives hooked up to the internet.  I emailed my stories to myself.  I then drove back to my apartment, and downloaded them to my new computer.  So it took over half-an-hour to move my files a foot.

I had a lot of individual stories, but for some I kept multiple versions of them as I revised them.  So it took me five or six trips to move everything.  I usually went to the library after work, but on Saturday I made two or three trips just to be done with the damn thing. 

That computer died five or six years ago, but I’ll always remember the pain I had setting it up.