HOW DO I UNPLUG

So today I’d like to discuss unplugging. Mostly because its really fucking hard for me to do lately.

Sturdy as a brick, and just as fast.

I mean, we all remember a time when there was no internet, right? But my dad has always worked with computers and thus there were several in the house. So even when I was a wee little lass I “plugged in”. We had some sweet, sweet computer games.

There was Freddi Fish; that game was GOLD.

There were the Zoombinis, hard as fuuuuuuuck.

There was a scary ass game about fairy tales that I can’t remember the name of…but it had this troll who gave me nightmares. Yes, I was afraid of trolls before the internet, the fear never ends…

There was also Math Blaster! AW YEAH, MATH IN SPACE – THIS IS AWESOME.

Speaking of space, I played the shit out of that space pin ball game that used to come standard with the old school Microsoft OS. I think I started playing that after I was introduced to the internet though. Regardless, I spent hours and hours of time on this thing that I can never get back.

Drawing this would have been impossible.

Oh and that game where you are skiing and that abominable snowman shows up and eats you…maybe this is why I’m not into snow.

[Edit]: Kauf reminded me of the name of this game! It was SKIFREE!!!

A few years later, I’d be playing those typing games at school too – you know like Mavis Beacon.

Even if I wasn’t playing games, I was experimenting with Microsoft Word. Me and my girl friend Heather were obsessed with walking and petting all the neighborhood dogs, so we deviced a plan to do so and get money out of it. DOG WALKING SERVICE. I’m not kidding, this happened. I wrote up a flyer in MS Word about our prices, pasted in some clip art and changed the font to Comic Sans (a font that I would come to hate if I saw it on any media outside of actual comic books).

Remember that little paper clip dude? He always had your back. He did get really annoying though…

These were all super fun and kept me at my dad’s computer pretty frequently.

So being “plugged in” is something that has been instilled in me long ago.

Fast forward to today – where I have a netbook and a desktop – I feel almost spoiled. Granted my netbook travels at the speed of light, if the speed of light were brutally beaten with a sledge hammer, ran over by a car and is currently in a coma, being kept alive using a ventilator. And my desktop was made in 2007…soooo 6 years ago. His memory is going in his old age, but he’s still trucking. I don’t have any of those fancy doo-hickies, like tablets or e-readers, or a computer that works… But I’m still “plugged in.”

It’s hard to unplug these days. Mostly because my classes are online, so I have to constantly be checking those and talking to my group project members. Equally difficult is the fact that my best friends are online, I mean I could just text them the whole day, but its faster to just chat them up on Steam or Skype. And lets say that I just want to sit back and relax and watch a movie – OH WAIT, NETFLIX IS ONLINE TOO.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Unplugging is hard to do.

The only time I’m truly unplugged is if I’m reading a book, which is usually when I’m studying at Barnes and Noble or doing it for fun before bed.

I remember I used to be unplugged way more often, but that was during my first bachelor’s degree, when all the people I loved were walking distance from me. And if they weren’t walking distance, they were just a short drive away. Hanging out then was much easier to do without “plugging in.”

But even then…I would go back to my dorm and hop on my computer, log into Guild Wars…

I think unplugging is nearly impossible now.

Advertisement

I AM TECH SUPPORT!

Disclaimer: I have never been, nor do I claim to be, a computer expert of any kind. The following story is based on true events that happened to me yesterday. All information regarding the incident was found off of google, my friend Kauf (a programmer), my friend Luuk (a person who knows what memory sticks are) and my own brain. If this isn’t how these things work, I am not the least bit surprised. At some point I will claim to be a computer wizard, I’d like to mention now that I do not and have never practiced magic. I was, however, my own tech support. Let me bask in this moment, okay? I did something without others present. THIS IS LIKE A HUGE LIFE ACCOMPLISHMENT. (Also, kind of magical)

Friends, I wish to tell you a little story.

It all started when I was typing up some essays yesterday, you know, normal nursing school stuff…when something happened to me. My computer screen suddenly went blank.

Naturally I immediately assumed it had something to do with the cable that runs from my magical computer box (tower) to my monitor. But I was interrupted mid-thought by a high pitched, upset, demonic noise suddenly erupting from my desktop tower.

My response, as it is when anything goes wrong with digital devices, was to turn off the computer. So I did. I waited a few seconds…and a few more, then I turned it back on. To my dismay, my tower was still singing its raging digital acapella. WTF IS HAPPENING??? OGOD.

Initially I of course, because I am a catastrophic thinker, went to the worst possible scenario; I killed it. I must have somehow offended my tower to the point of hardware suicide. It was failing to thrive. My computer was dying and this was its final Cheyne-Stokes breathes. I turned it off and went into full TECH PANIC MODE.

I texted a few people, but when no one responded,  I called my friend Kauf. I don’t recall most of the phone call in much detail, it was a blur of anxiety, but I do remember Kauf telling me that my computer’s beeps were a code. A code? Well, shit. What kind of code are we talking here? It wants to communicate with me, I’m okay with that, I’ll go into the grid! WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO TALK WITH IT???

Unfortunately, my call was badly timed, as Kauf was in the middle of a Final Fantasy XIV Online raid.  I apologized for the frantic phone call, said goodbye, and just sat on the floor staring at my computer tower.

A code? My sweet, innocent tower, what is it that you want to tell me? Is this in binary? Is binary even a language? Are there other languages? Oh sweet Jesus, I hope this isn’t the audio version of C++…for a moment the scene from Zoolander came to mind… I don’t understand.  LET ME HELP YOU.

With no options left, and millions of unanswered questions, I knew there was only one thing left to try. Google it.

I ran for my laptop and ferociously finger stabbed my keyboard until the google screen appeared. When you type into google “dying computer noises” you actually get free sound clips of what, I presume, a computer sounds like when its dying. Which is random and cool at the same time, but of no use to me. So I tried “computer noises + code” (Kauf mentioned it, so I should have probably used that in the search…) and BAM, answers!

The beepies are  “beep codes” that are used by something called BIOS (basic input output system). The BIOS is the lord of the boots! Boots being the booting up process of a computer. BIOS is the tower guardian.

Mr. BIOS was letting me know that shit was going down in my tower. OH GOD HOW DO I COMMUNICATE WITH YOU MR. BIOS??? Easy, back to google. I searched “HP BIOS codes” – and lo and behold, I had found it. THE ROSETTA STONE FOR HP DESKTOP TOWER BIOS BEEPS. OH WHAT A GLOOOOOORIOUS DAY!

I listened again to my tower’s beep message, it wasn’t random complaints,  oh no, no sir. My computer was speaking to me. He was saying “ONE SHORT BEEP AND A LONG BEEP. ONE SHORT BEEP AND A LONG BEEP. HEY, ARE YOU GETTING THIS? I MEAN I CAN KEEP GOING, BUT I FEEL LIKE I’M JUST REPEATING MYSELF AT THIS POINT. ONE SHORT BEEP AND A LONG BEEP.”

I’ll spare you the suspense, it was a memory problem. I tore open my tower and searched for the culprits. Two, very suspicious, RAM sticks were just sitting there…acting like nothing had fucking happened. YOU DON’T FOOL ME, DEVIANTS!

I took one of the sticks of RAM out, tried to turn my computer on again, but he was still cranky and repeating the memory BIOS code. So I put that one back and took out the other one. The most magical thing happened when I pressed the power…MY COMPUTER BOOTED. It brought a tear to my eye. But I couldn’t celebrate just yet…my computer is hella old, I can’t just survive off of one memory stick for long. Looking at the motherboard, where the stick holders (not the technical term) were located I took note that two of them were black and two of them were blue. The memory sticks had been in the blue slots, so, I moved both sticks into the black slots and tried turning on the computer.

SUCCESS. I had never been so happy to see my monitor screen’s ten minute long Windows Starting logo.

Then it dawned on me. This is the first time, ever, in the history of my life, that I fixed a hardware computer problem BY MYSELF. AND IT FELT GLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORIOUS! 

To reward myself, I went on a magical internet browsing journey where I accomplished nothing, and it felt great. The moral of this story is, wait no, there’s no moral to this story. This is just what happened to me yesterday.

But, there was a take away message from all this, and that is – I AM A COMPUTER WIZARD, I DON’T NEED TECH SUPPORT, I AM TECH SUPPORT *drops a mic* DEUCES.