2008 has been one hell of a year, and it’s not even a month old.
We started out with the computer on the fritz. This plucky little machine has been chugging along for years now, but it was starting to wheeze under the strain. It has suffered at the hands of an anime-obsessed teenage girl and a Goth-inspired young man. It has listened to many, many song downloads. It has held thousands of photos. It has groaned at my prose.
We tried clearing out the files of the young-man-who-has-flown-the-coop. We uploaded photos to online storage. We lit incense and prayed to the bits/bytes gods.
Nothing worked.
Daughter suggested we upgrade the operating system. I balked (that’s what moms do) but as the days wore on and I was getting the shakes, cradling the useless keyboard in my hands and sobbing, I agreed.
I am a technotard. But I understand the words others tell me, even if I do no fully comprehend the meaning. It seems there are these things called “drivers” that communicate between the programs and the operating system. Without the drivers, the programs are like college students on spring break, getting rowdy and flashing their boobies at strangers. The operating system throws up its hands in disgust and settles into a recliner with a tall glass of scotch. The only remedy is to download updated drivers, which sounds good…in theory.
Unfortunately, one of the programs that goes crazy is the modem. It’s at a party on the beach, so getting it to download the updates is damn near impossible. It stumbles and barfs a lot. It delivers information sporadically, at an appallingly slow speed, before it passes out. We connected at 9 kbs. That is not a misprint. Nine. The website said it would take 872 years to get all of the required updates. Talk about irony! We couldn’t download the upgrades needed because the modem needed upgrades.
Then Eldest Son (belated Happy Birthday sweetie - love you!) rode to our rescue. He told us that Sprint just came out with a new thingy that you plug into the USB port and it works like a wireless high-speed connection. We went to the Sprint store and got it - it looks like half of a cell phone. It was easy to install and is working like a charm (she whispered, lest she jinx the thing).
So the gods smiled on us and we got high-speed Internet access. The programs got upgraded and the computer is running like a political pollster is chasing it. I bet it will be really cool once I get to use it. Because of course, one thing goes right and…well you know….
Grandma got broken. Somehow she tore the rotator cuff in her shoulder. It’s a painful injury and an even more painful surgery and recuperation. I know this because I heard it from ten different doctors and because grandma tells me. It meant she would need assistance, so we started staying at her house to take care of her, and to allow her plenty of opportunities to remind me that it’s a painful injury and an even more painful surgery and recuperation. I understand. I’ve been broken - a lot.
So I’m trying to be patient and polite. My halo is starting to slip though and feels more like a noose - LOL!
But I try to find humor in the situation, and I have to admit, it ain’t easy. Grandma’s pain meds cause her to slur her speech and speak softly. I seem to be the only one who can hear or understand her. So now I am the driver, trying to communicate between the operating system and the programs.
Grandma will mutter something and Husband or Daughter will misunderstood and respond with an inappropriate answer. It goes something like this:
Grandma says - “This light bulb went out”.
Husband responds - “Yes, it’s cold but bright out”.
Daughter responds - “I don’t like trout”.
I could use an upgrade.
Posted by Marti @ 
