The Great Tron War

This blog has two principal audiences. Those who are computer-challenged will be comforted that they are not alone. The mavens will have an opportunity for some chuckles and head shaking.

I think I won the war. It may be like one of those monster movies where they bring it down and are all relieved and hugging each other, and then it springs back into life. At any rate, I have at least beaten the monster back into the sea. At no small cost.

It all began with a few hiccups on the computer. I have the latest and greatest security software of the mainstream variety, so I wasn’t too concerned about that. Of course, the same brand of software failed to deal with the barbarians at the gate a year ago, and I was forced to do a total wipe and rebuild.

Was my computer filling up? I do some video projects, but buy big enough to leave breathing room and, hopefully, not have to upgrade for years. Was some internal gadget wearing out? You can tell I’m a computer whiz kid.

I decided I could live with the minor annoyances for a while. Nonetheless, I hastened to finish some projects that had deadlines looming. That may be the one thing I did right.

Yesterday, the problems intensified and the machine became almost useless. I was getting weird messages and alerts. One was an error message about a faulty video driver and I could go to Mother Microsoft for a download. Theoretically. If you crash long before you can wend your way through their menu and download, you’re screwed. A classic Catch-22. You can fix the problem (maybe) by going to the website, but the problem won’t let you do that.

I tried a few other things, including reloading the original software. Nice try. Well, at least I had added an external hard drive last year to back up my files. But, from some of the irregularities, I half suspected it had something to do with this.

This morning, it hit rock bottom, so I went to the major league computer store, in hopes of finding some miracle cure of a software repair program. The clerk looked suitably geeky and had one of those new age names, so I trusted him. He suggested we go see a tech. More than I expected and spirits soared.

The tech looked like a darker version of Yoda. It just gets better and better. He listened as I ran down the list of symptoms, showing no sign of emotion or anything else. When he determined I was through, he enumerated a lengthy list of possible culprits, none of them easy or cheap to fix. One of them was a virus, but I told him what software I had for that. He didn’t quite snort.

Did I want to sink this kind of effort and money into a box that had been developing its share of quirks over the years anyway? Let’s check out the cost of something new and do the math.

My clerk escorted me to the hardware aisle and asked me what I did with the computer. Word processing, email and video production. He led me to a machine and enumerated some of the qualities.

I said it sounded okay, but was there something a notch up? He looked a little puzzled or offended, I couldn’t tell. So, he pointed out another black box that appeared about the same. I noted its price and asked him if there was something even more powerful. I didn’t want to have to come back and visit him in a year.

He slapped his hand on top of the next box down. “This is it.” Out came the recitation of gigs, megas, cores, cards and a bunch of other things that had minimal meaning to me.

I mused about it and, all of a sudden, he lit up. He grabbed my arm and drew me across the floor. “This is the Super Blastermaster 10,000 (or whatever), the baddest game box in creation!” He was a little too aroused for my comfort level.

“I don’t play games.”

“Yeah, but this has more power than you can imagine. You can rule the world.”

It cost more than my last roof job. “Kids pony up those kind of bucks to play games?”

“You bet.”

Let them. I went back down a notch. I don’t need to rule the world. I can barely supervise a cat.

I expected to get the pitch for extended warranty and did. I parried that. What I didn’t expect was a special price offer on Office, since I wanted to word process. “But, it has that included.”

“Not Word, Works. You said you did word processing.”

“Works has Word.”

“Not all Works has Word.”

“But that’s what Works means, everything. Give it to me with the works. Everything.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying.” Apparently, I wasn’t conversant in geekspeak, or maybe no idioms of the current century.

“Now this does have some feature that transfers files from the old computer, doesn’t it?”

“Never heard of anything like that.”

I was pretty sure it did, but he had the nametag. He suggested something called “The Tornado” that would whisk all the stuff over. I still had my doubts, but liked the sound of “whisk.” I wanted this to be as easy and seamless as possible, even though that seemed most unlikely.

Then, I recalled the external drive and told him I could probably copy off that. “Not really. You can usually only use them to recover your current computer.”

What did I have it for, then? My confidence in him was flagging.

More good news. “You do realize that this is a 64-bit not a 32 like you have?”

“Uh, sure.” What was he gabbling about, now? “Wait, does that mean that some of my programs won’t run?” He shrugged, amazingly unconcerned. “But, I have to dig up the phone company’s disk so I connect to the internet,” Panic was creeping in.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. You’ll connect as soon as you plug in.” Yeah, right. He wasn’t there for the run of the gauntlet I had to do when I switched to them from dial-up
“And, I can give you a special price on security software. The computer comes with a trial of what you have now, but this is much better. We use it.”

Good enough for me. I wasn’t in love with my current product, which seemed to have been modeled after Swiss cheese. But, I thought I’d better check out before he sold me one of everything in the store.

My work space was already crammed with the current computer, printer, scanner, CD burner and photo printer, not to mention enough artifacts to imbue my den with an Addams Family feel. I call it my kitchen of the mind. So, setting up the new box was an exercise in cramming the proverbial five-pound bag.

It isn’t like I could just dispatch the current rig. The transfer of files had to be done with two live computers. This was exacerbated by the fact that the current one was on life support, not to mention finding enough electrical outlets to keep everything humming.

Job one was to breathe life into the new machine. I slit open the box and grabbed the instructions. I was careful to put them aside where I could find them if I ever decided to consult the book. Who had time for that, now?

I cleared some space and strung the wiring. There was some breath holding when it came time to push the button, but it lit up. “It’s alive. It’s alive!”

I was put through the usual hoops of supplying personal information, creating passwords and making choices that I understood about as much as I grasp Chinese calculus. Then, it was time to add software, but where?

The visage of the box was a gleaming monolith in “piano black.” Why anyone wanted a computer equated to that is anyone’s guess except their marketing department. I sighed and retrieved the manual to locate the CD drive. Nothing was designated as that, or much else that I recognized. Modern speak. Like, no one is unemployed anymore. They’re in transition. Do they collect in-transition payments from the state?

Something called an optical reader was located behind one of the secret doors. Close enough. All I had to do was noodle out the open sesame for the portal. I managed to do that and it was time to crack open Office. Good luck on that one. The plastic box was some kind of 3-D puzzle.

I pried and prodded, with no effect. Finally, I surrendered and grabbed the readers to scan the packaging for a hint. Push the tab and the core rotates out. Whatever happened to the simple jewel case?

The slot hungrily ate the disk and instructions began to fire at me. Not far down the road, it asked me for the product key, as expected. No sweat. It was too soon in the process for me to have misplaced that. Pride cometh before the fall.

The rotation of the package core had scraped off one of the digits from the label. Great design. That relegated me to a period of trial & error, manufacturing various combinations and permutations of curses. But, I finally cracked the code. It hooked right up to the internet to register and I hadn’t even loaded the phone company disk. I took that as a good omen and hoped I would be able to pull off the same trick when it was time. I also noticed that it gave me an option of file transfer from my present computer. So much for the geek’s product knowledge, although it did appear slightly complex.

Now to transfer the files. In the showroom, the clerk demonstrated the ease of the Tornado by plugging it into two floor models. Each computer immediately displayed a split screen of file menus, this computer and that one, so you could easily effect the transfer. My next challenge dawned on me. I didn’t buy a new monitor, so I had only the one that was now connected to the new machine.

That shouldn’t be a problem, since it would show both menus. I plugged the Tornado into both boxes and my sense of foreboding was validated. It displayed only this computer. What fresh hell is this?

I surmised that the old boy was up to its tricks but couldn’t see a display for it and know what error messages were blinking or if had frozen. Geek boy told me it wouldn’t make a difference, but obviously something was awry. I couldn’t even reboot because there would be no display of buttons for me to click to log on.

More variations on curses. I calmed myself to think this thing out. The geek had said I could also simply pull the hard drive out of the old computer and download off that. Simply. Disemboweling a computer wasn’t in my skill set.

But, there was the external hard drive, so I plugged that into the new computer. It came up with a file menu. Hallelujah. But, the drive wouldn’t surrender the booty without my loading its software into the new computer. And, even then, nothing was guaranteed. I already had some suspicions about this device and was loathe to infect the new computer.

Back to the drawing board. It occurred to me that there was an ancient monitor sitting in the garage from a couple generations of hardware ago; one of those older jobs the size of a countertop refrigerator with a screen a little more expansive than a thumbnail. Would that even couple up with a newer device? I was now in a pessimistic mode. The couplings didn’t match, but I had a box full of adaptors and was surprised to find one that worked. I soon had a display, thanks to not dumping the old monitor years back. Score one for hoarders.

The display told me that the old computer had taken advantage of its cloak of darkness to get into all kinds of mischief. I restarted and got the desired split screens on both computers. Oh yeah!

But, I knew enough about these things to understand I wasn’t out of the woods. There were hurdles, stemming from the differences in the machines and operating systems. The computers are the same brand and the software also shares the same publisher. You would expect them to be completely compatible, but not so. I get along better than that with my ex, and we’ve exchanged gunfire.

I could live with some of the transfer gaps. There were still some of my old programs to attempt to load, but I was anxious to take a test drive. For the first time, I took a good look at the screen. I had moved from Windows XP to 7, but still expected something recognizable or at least intuitive.

Instead of a few familiar desktop shortcuts, there was a small array of icons across the top that looked like something inscribed on the portal in “Stargate.” Damn cuneiforms from an alien visit eons ago. I hadn’t been supplied with a manual, not that I would’ve cracked it anyway. But, it would be nice to have a fallback. I messed with them and discovered that they were stylized renditions of objects that reasonably represented a function, however abstractly. I was able to belly crawl through a few functions, but didn’t find it very user friendly and not at all familiar.

All I wanted to know at this point is, can I write and can I reach the internet? I can, so I’m declaring a victory. I still have some cleanup to do, but you take the victories where you get them.