For a Pessimist, I am Pretty Optimistic

My roommate once told me a story about how a friend of his lost two pet frogs in one day. His friend owned dozens of “boy” pets (frogs, lizards, insects, and anything else he picked up on the road), but his favorite was his 2 pet frogs. One was teeny tiny, the other was the Marlon Brando of frogs. For some reason, he kept the two of them in the same tank and would even bring them to school, much to his teacher’s horror.

One day, the friend came home and found only one frog in the tank. He looked all over the house, convinced that the other frog had escaped somehow. It wasn’t until he fed the remaining gigantic frog that he realized it had sat and crushed his other beloved pet. As punishment, he took the offending creature to a cliff and flung it over.

“Oh my god! How could he have done that?” I couldn’t help but exclaim after this story was told. “I mean, it’s a giant frog, it’s not his fault that he wasn’t put in his own tank.” Sure kids do all sorts of things for reasons that make sense to only them, but how could anyone do that to something they loved? I never understood…until now.

While chatting on the phone with my husband about what to have for dinner, I set my laptop, Ichiban, to standby. I went to the store, bought some pasta, and came back no less than 15 minutes later. Opening the laptop so I could check my mail and continue the major catch up game I always play with my favorite sites, I noticed that instead of being dormant, the computer was completely off. I shrugged, turned it back on, and entered my password. Strangely, I had to wait ten very long minutes as my settings loaded. That alone should have alerted me. But I didn’t pay it any mind which is why I was completely flabbergasted to see instead of my usual dorky astronomy widgets on my desktop, but the generic Microsoft green hill with blue sky.

Everything was gone. All my photos. All my posts. All the bits and pieces I managed to type up that I hoped would be used for some sort of novel, if I ever disciplined myself enough to just sit and write without wandering away. Even all my widgets were gone. The only things that remain are a few documents in the recycle bin, but those are just nonsense like a to-do list, interestingly titled “Death”.

I understand these things happen, but I can’t help but be irrationally angry at my computer. Being a tad superstitious about my writing, in the year that I have had him, no one but me has touched the keyboard. Hell, I even frickin’ gave the damn thing a name. It’s gotten that I can’t even type all that well on any other keyboard. Well, I wasn’t the best typist before, but even now as I use my husband’s comp, I’m misspelling words left and right simply from my giant fingertips accidently hitting two keys at once.

I called my husband back to complain. He said “Don’t worry; I’ll try to see if we can find anything else.”

“Please, that’s no use. I saw Sex and the City,” I retorted. “All you’re gonna find is a bunch of encryption symbols!”

“Well maybe we’ll be able to find a few more things,” he insisted.

“Why should we even bother?” I continued to rant. “I hate this piece of shit. I don’t even want to have Best Buy repair it, I just want to throw it down the stairs and get a whole new one.” Hey, at least I’m not murdering frogs, though come to think of it, I might if a frog was the cause for the crash.

“Well we’ll still try when I get back home. Is there anything you can think of that might have caused it? Did you click on an ad, download an unknown document?”

“Of course not, I save anything questionable to be checked on your computer with its oodles and oodles of anti-spy and virus whatever.”

“Well come on, there has to have been something.”

I thought. My computer usage today wasn’t unlike any other time. I checked my two yahoo accounts. I checked my TIBU posts. I read a bit until Internet Explorer unexpectedly shut down (a common occurrence whenever I open too many tabs). I logged into everything again and checked the hit count on my blog. I was about to finish up a story that I had been working on, but instead went to the store before it closed.

Man, it was going to be a cute story too. Under the working title “The Perfect Murder”, it was meant to make the reader think that I’m contemplating murdering my husband for his insurance policy, just to find out at the end that I was really plotting on breaking my laptop (so I could get a new one before the insurance on it ran out and wouldn’t be able to get a replacement).

It’s like the bastard knew the whole time and just had to have the final say.

“Hi, I’m a Mac. I’m supposed to be young and fresh and make you feel like a loser for not owning a Mac.”

“And I’m a PC. Of course I’m going to be portrayed as older, stodgy, and sweaty.”

With this ad campaign, so began the Mac/PC wars, especially in my home. I have an HP laptop while my roommate has been a religious Mac user. I am definitely NOT a tech savvy person, but I always thought that PC was the superior system.

I had grown up in a household of Macs. Never using the computer for more than typing school reports or to check my always empty AOL mail, I lived in blissful ignorance. Even after switching from dial-up to DSL, I had grown accustomed to reading a book while a lower case E bounced and bounced on the bottom of the screen. Entire days were devoted to downloading an album from Napster. A straightened paperclip was kept on the desk to reset the computer when it crashed since our iMac didn’t have a reset button. It wasn’t until my step-father bought a Dell laptop that I immediately fell in love with Word and Outlook.

Macs were always ridiculously slow reacting whenever I used them for anything. No matter what model I used, I’d always end up staring too long at that stupid bouncing Internet Explorer icon. My roommate bought a new iMac in 2007 and even when I use that, it takes forever to load a new internet page. Of course, it works perfectly for my roommate who always got a chuckle from my frustration and “neglected” to tell me to just use Firefox.

The Get a Mac commercials began after the release of Vista. I don’t know what it was but something about Justin Long’s floppy hair annoyed me. If he was supposed to be a representation of the average Mac user, then I was happy not owning one. To me, he seemed like the pretentious Starbucks toting people who think they’re so bohemian because they live in the Village, but really spend $2400 a month to rent their tiny studio apartment.

As the commercials continued and Vista annoyed people with constant prompts, I became more and more irritated with the Apple marketing team. Ever since most Apple loathers gave into the superiority of iTunes, it seems like the Apple team was getting too cocky. The commercials played on the TV and radio constantly and I was starting to feel bad for poor Mr. PC. He began to look more disheveled and sweaty than before.

After having too many a fight on whose turn it was to use the computer, my husband purchased my HP laptop with Vista already installed. I loved the look of Vista and how everything was so much prettier than XP. iMacs never came with a side bar that had cool little “gadgets” (like a weather widget and a scrambled picture puzzle). Oh they do? Well, screw you anyway Mac!

However, iMacs never hid their settings. After messing around for hours, I found the main settings and tried to change the computer font. However, I made the wrong selection and have not been able to find the damn options again. Oh, I can change the window color, the screen saver, and the font size, but for months I’ve been forced to squint while reading swirly script letters that have heart dotted I’s.

Then the Get a Mac commercials started pointing fingers at Vista users who switched back to XP. Stubbornly insisting that Vista was perfect for me, I ignored my husband’s offer to install XP. He jumped ship after switching to Vista for only a week. “I hate that stupid Mac guy; it’s because he’s so obnoxious that I’m not switching,” I told him. I remained firm, even as Vista “encountered problems with Internet Explorer” and would suddenly shut down every window I had opened.

My frustration grew as I was prevented from opening multiple windows. The weather widget told me it was sunny while snow flurries were falling. Explore.exe (whatever that is) would shut down, re-start, and shut-down again. As my roommate taunted and jeered at my yells of “Damn you Vista!” I still refused to downgrade. Oops, not downgrade but “upgrading to an older more familiar experience”.

3 weeks ago I noticed that Apple was still continuing with their campaign. Their “Group” commercial was all too familiar to me. Out of stubbornness, I managed to get used to the sporadic crashes. However, this week things were just ridiculous. I couldn’t open up anything. Not Word, not iTunes, not the internet. The task manager wouldn’t even open. Re-start and the same crap kept happening. I gave up and asked my husband to install XP. While he looked for the CD, I checked my email on my roommate’s iMac. I glowered as that damn lower case E bounced mockingly at me.