Computer Affairs

 Until I was in my late 40s I never sat in front of a computer.  On the first day of a required class, Computers in the Behavioral Sciences, our professor asked us to turn on our computers and follow the instructions on the screen.  Once booted the computer screen instructed “Please type your name.  I typed “Jennie.”  The computer said, “Welcome, Jennie.  How are you?”    I twitched and my mind crashed. 

The computers professor, who was behaviorally oriented, was a good teacher.  He led us step by step, from the surprise of being able to turn on a computer to the basics of the BASIC programming language.  I have seldom had so much fun.  Imagine – I could make a machine do something interesting.  More than that, I quickly realized that computers do well everything that I do poorly – they spell, they do math quickly and accurately, their handwriting is legible.

My favorite programming assignment was to create a subtraction program for elementary school children.  We were to post a math problem with numbers chosen randomly from numbers between zero and twenty, give the student two tries at it, and then, if the answer was still wrong, post the correct answer.  If on either try the student answered correctly, we were to post one of several congratulations.  I took it a little beyond and added a moving stick-figure cartoon and random musical phrase to the congratulatory messages and the sorry, wrong answer, messages.  I then made minor adjustments to the program to make addition, multiplication, and division programs.

I kept playing with the BASIC language after the semester was over.  My proudest achievement was a couple of simple ANOVA programs that would give correct answers.  Later, when I ran the data on my Masters thesis, my advisor made me learn the department’s UNIX machine.  The UNIX gave answers that matched my ANOVA program's answers.

In the throes of my thesis, I invested my teaching stipend in my first computer, a PC Junior.  It was to me an elegant little box.  It had, as computers at the time had, and as I have now, a pitifully small memory.  I knew a doctoral student who said that as she typed the current chapter of her dissertation into her computer, her earlier chapters were falling out the back of the computer’s memory.

Eventually the PC Junior died of old age.  At the time I was working for the University of Virginia and a friend told me the University held regular auctions to sell surplus furniture and electronic gear.  I went to one, and got, for the sum of $25.00, not one, but two computers.  When I got them home I discovered that neither computer had a hard drive.  This was one of the better things that has happened to me.  Because the computers were comparatively cheap, and because I had two of them, I had nothing to lose; I could play around with one of them with impunity.  I sent away for a hard drive at a reasonable price, a book on how to fix your computer, and an anti-static wrist strap.  Installing the hard drive was surprisingly easy (most computers were plug and play even then).  plugging things into the motherboard was as easy as building with legos.  At the end the computer worked well.  Encouraged, I sent away for the other hard drive, installed it and gave that computer to a friend.

The next computer was a Dell desktop, which we used until it’s operating system became obsolete and it lost anti-virus and malware protection.
 

The next to the last computer was a Dell laptop computer.  A few weeks ago it showed distinct signs of a failing hard disk.  I have said for years, on the misunderstanding that laptops were too tiny for my clumsy fingers to fix, that I’d worked on my last computer.  I got a new computer and paid someone to transfer documents and pictures on the old computer to the new computer.  After 18 days in my possession, two of the new computer's usb drives failed and I sent it away to be fixed.

But then, under the influence of computer withdrawal and curious about what a defter geek would do to replace the laptop hard drive, I searched on the  internet with my failing laptop for 'replace laptop hard drive.'  I discovered that it could be done from the outside and one didn’t need tiny fingers.  Once again I have little to lose.  I intend to try to fix the old laptop, maybe replace its dead usb port too (I must be hard on usb ports), and then figure out who needs an elderly laptop.  

Computers have been an entertaining and frustrating hobby for years.   I remember them all with gratitude and pleasure.