title of blog

Honey, I'm Home's Morning Mantra ~~ Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor each morning the devil says, "Oh NO, She's up!"

Saturday, December 4, 2010

In The Beginning ~~

I’m passing on this little crazy tidbit because of Beth.  She jogged my memory of my first PC and I knew if I didn’t write about that, I’d forget.

My first PC was 15 years ago, with Windows 95 to start, and back then it was almost $2000 for a bundled package.  I can’t even remember the brand except that it started with either a B or a G.  Watch it be neither.  I placed that order and was so excited I actually had chills.  I counted the days until it arrived and when that day came, oooooo boyyyyy, I felt like I was on top of the world.  I opened all the boxes and there were a lot.  I spread all the parts on the floor and got out the diagram and started putting it all together.  “Hey, not too hard”, I thought.  Then it was ready and I was all smiles.  For a moment I stood back and admired my handiwork and my new found extreme pleasure of knowing that I, too, was going to be a part of this great web of the world. With an excited deep breath, I sat down in my new office chair at my new desk and was completely all a’twitter.  Then it hit me. The smile turned upside down. I squinted. I felt a major panic hit me.  I had no idea how to turn it on and it didn’t say how to do that in the instructions.  Completely dumfounded, I sat there and tried to figure it out.  Nothing, not a clue.  So I picked up the phone and dialed the company and never felt more the fool when I said, “Hello, I know this is probably a silly call, but I just got this computer and it’s ready to go, except that I don’t know how to turn it on. Could you tell me how, please?”  The guy on the other end actually said to me, “Is this a joke? Did Bill put you up to this?”  And then he starts laughing and calls out to Bill.  I could hear them both, and guess who felt like a bigger fool than I did, HA.  So, he told me where that button was (in front of my nose, for heaven’s sake), I pushed it, and the lights came on!  Heaven!  Then, I started pushing keys and shouldn’t have done that. All these pop-ups (I didn’t even know what they were back then) showed on my screen and I started clicking on those, too. The next thing I knew, I had a trillion porn sites grabbing my entire existence!  If I thought I was in a panic before, well that was nothin’ compared to what was happening now. I couldn’t even breathe, I was heart attack bound, and I couldn’t get the darn stuff off my screen as it kept multiplying like crazy.  I dialed the company back.  Oh yeah, had to do it.  This person explained to me how to shut my darn PC off.  Oh, it just gets worse. It wouldn’t shut off by the regular avenue, so I had to push that button again.  The next thing I hear is the person asking me if I have an antivirus program.  A what?  Machines get sick?  Here I am, the first day with a computer, and within 10 minutes I find out that it is now infected with viruses and I have no antivirus program.  I unplugged everything and took the tower into a shop I found in the yellow pages (I still use the same company). At first I thought I’d have to take ALL the parts to them, but they explained it was the tower that is actually a computer.  Off I go and they fixed it by the next day, I brought it home, rehooked everything, and then took a breath and tried again.  THIS time, here’s what happened:

I knew there were great games online and I wanted to play pong, so I did a search, clicked on one of the results, and landed in this strange pong game site.  The game looked like a cave and there was a button that said click here if you want to play. I did. That ball started flying faster than I could even see!  I lost the game to a robot within 10 seconds. All of a sudden, I saw this typed message to me and it asked if I wanted to play. Omg, where am I.  I didn’t know how to answer so I thought (really I did) that someone must be looking at me at that very moment.  Out loud I said, “Sure!”  And then I sat and sat.  The message started again, and it said, “Do you want to play or not”.  Uh oh, talking out loud must not be the answer, so I frantically started looking for a way to communicate.  A message started again, and this time, it said, “I think you must be brand new to computers and don’t know what to do. Do you see the little area under the cave? Click into that line and type an answer, then we can talk”.  It was there! The space to type was there!  My fingers were flying. It turned out that this person was a girl named Kerrie in California and she taught me the game.  We batted that ball back and forth for hours and hours.  She won game after game that day, and at the end of every game she would type, GG.   I couldn’t figure out what that was.  Finally I won 1 game, and again she typed GG with an exclamation point behind it.  I was so thrilled that I won and so positive that she was good naturedly laughing about the whole thing, that I thought GG must mean “giggling”!  I typed GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG across the whole bloody screen.  Who knew it meant Good Game?  Can you even imagine later on when someone would type, “gg, p”.  I certainly had a lot to learn.  Oh, and if you’ve never played a team game online, “gg, p” means “good game, partner”.  It did NOT mean “good game and now you can take a break and go pee”.

______

This is for Carole (Ramblingon) just because I thought it was cute of Sam and Lucy and Carole’s Miss Kitt has been so beautifully hatted:

                                             PrincessLucyandPirateSam 2

And so, I am leaving you now to take a well deserved long nap.  I spent the entire night and today installing a gazillion batteries and setting up the front porch and the entire downstairs and half of the upstairs.  I am pooped.  GG all  soccerball

XOXOXO

20 comments:

  1. Oh, that made me remember the very first Apple computer I ever worked on when I was teaching...oh my gosh, that thing took forever to load or even do anything constructive with...gosh, how far we've come...

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  2. I remember all of the trial and error and not knowing what to do. I too had viruses in the beginning, all from friends sending me these dumb msgs with attachments that I was dumb enough to open. Boy did I learn a hard lesson. It has all been fun though and I wouldn't trade that learning experience.
    Love the photo of Sam and Lucy. They are adorable!!

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  3. P.S. I love the reindeer flying across your screen. See, you can do anything!!!

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  4. LOLOL!!!! Jenny, you so remind me of myself. My first computer was given to me by, my then, son-in-law, and I was clueless!! Still am about a lot of things computer related (based on the fact that this one is now falling apart)!

    Hope you're having a good nap!! (((hugs))

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  5. Ok I have to admit.. my first computer was a Commodore 64! lol I played Rat Race until I was blue in the face. I was probably 13? I never knew how lucky I was to own one of those. Who knows what happened to it.
    Our first computer when we were married was one hubby bought through a computer catalog. It was a CyberMax and I believe the year was 1998. You picked out each part and they put it together for you. We were so excited to get that thing and put it in the back bedroom and play all day. It was Win 95 too. We've never actually owned a name brand computer since. Hubby has just upgraded every part on his own.

    Now about that nap.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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  6. I loved this story. I didn't have to learn the hard way too much as I had 3 computer savvy boys here..the sons, don't 'cha know! BUT: that didn't force me to learn much and it still shows. I just turn to them. Sigh. I couldn't get snow on here if I tried. BUT I did (dead easy) get it on my Word Press blog.

    Your babies are beautifully hatted by you. If my friend Judi had not have hatted Miss Bianca she would still be bare headed!!

    I was delighted you met Mr. Puddy. You're right..don't tell. We can't have any dueling over Lucy's charms, which are considerable.

    xox

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  7. I loved this. 'H' bought a 'puter from his son and set it up.He showed me stuff but, after he had gone home, I got on it and I couldn't remember how to get online. I called him feeling foolish and asked how do I get online?. It was such a novelty, I'd stay on until the wee hours. Your fur babies are so cute in their hats.I've never tried a hat on Kassey. If you don't mind, would you put instructions or tell us where to get the snow and Santa? Your blog looks really good.

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  8. I started out taking a correspondence course in Multimedia Programming, mostly to use my GI Bill benefits before they ran out but also because you built your own computer as part of the course. After I completed the first 6 or 7 blocks of the course (theory)the first hardware shipped. Frankie called me at work one day and said UPS had just dropped 2 large boxes addressed to me. WOO-HOO! I radioed the boss, told him I was taking leave for the rest of the day and flew home! When Frankie returned from the grocery store she nearly had a stroke when she walked in and found me in the middle of the living room floor with the cover off the tower and computer parts all around me. She asked if the computer worked and I said "I don't know; I haven't plugged it in yet." She asked if I had lost my mind and I said "Probably." When I put it back together and turned it on my first task was installing Windows 95A.....which came on 13 floppy disks!

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  9. Great story! I never had a personal computer until I married my current husband---who brought an oldie with him that my son, Sean, took to, playing The Island of Dr. Brain, which was on a floppy. I finally figured out how to play solitaire, but other than that, couldn't do much with it. I worked with Word Perfect 2 when it first came out---but only at work. What an innovation! Great memories, those old first computers!!!

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  10. Great story as usual Jenny. Boy, I'm way behind all of you. I worked on computers since my first job in 1971, but didn't get a home computer until 2001. By then I learned lots of things on the job and always had a techie there to unscrew my screw ups. At home, as long as I could undo or "go back" I did okay. I figure you can't learn anything if you don't try to figure it out yourself. Hey and I learned a lot! I can't imagine my life without a computer.

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  11. Oh Jenny, how cross I am at not logging into you for a couple of days, now see what's happened, you write up the most interesting blogs and I haven't caught up with them, just where does the time go, but I have been a bit busy acquiring a new dog. lookee on the blogeee.
    About your computer, it did make me smile, I think we can all relate to it in some way or another. I got my first one and it didn't even have Windows, it was Dos, then I got windows with all these floppies, but the biggest boob I made was completely deleting all the files, system included. I saw this stuff and it says 'file manager' I thought that the person I got the computer from [it was second hand] left them on there, and I just went 'swipe 'em' Hee, hee, luckily a relative was an ITN teacher at school and he sorted it and all my computer no-no's for a long time.
    Love the furbabes hats. have a lovely week and do pop over and see my new addition to the family. Catch you maybe to-morrow.

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  12. P.S. love your new look ad the header. but I see no reindeer going across the screen, snowflake thingies, yes.

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  13. My first brush with computers was a college class in Computer Science back around 1974. As part of the final grade, we had to write our own program and punch it out on those cardboard slips.
    We didn't get our first computer till around 1992. And we had "dial up service"! Mom and Marisa got a new one in 1995, and I got the "old one" all for myself...till it was replaced by a used one that Kim inherited from a friend around 2001. That one (with Windows 95 was upgraded to Windows 98. It croaked in 2006, when I got this one brand new.
    Hopefully, someday I'll "cyfer out" how to operate this thing!

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  14. Jenny this is me with my first one too. I had to laugh becuase I did some of those things. My hubby bought me a laptop. I ddint know how to turn it off or on and when I did get it one I had never seen one before and I did get scared. Go figure and its not that long ago. I since have had two other comp.and it didnt take me long and I was off and running with it. A book for Windows Dummies in one hand and going to figure it all out and I did. Loved your stop.
    Love Love the cats. How very very sweet.
    Hope all is well .I also like the new layout for christmas here.
    Your so upbeat and never do I not come away from here without a smile.
    Im trying to catch up and I think its impossible I have been gone so long so Im just going to continue on.
    Have a great night.

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  15. Love your new Christmas scenes here. I just don't have time for all the fun. I used to do mine up when I was at spaces. Your cats are so adorable. Miss Catt is going to be very jeolous. Until this laptop I had all handme down computers that were given to me. So was always working on something that was already outdated. I started out with a laptop with dos. Then a desktop with with the 1st windows. Then a laptop with windows 95. Was never on the internet with these. Couldn't even do one photo without the computer crashing. But I always bought all the compute magazines and used tutorials when they had them. Then just over 2 years ago I bought a laptop and in 2 months hooked up for the first time on the internet. Within 2 weeks I had found Windows live spaces and was blogging. As I don't have a phone where I live I was finally connected to the world. Now I just need a faster connection as I only have satilite internet the slowing connection they provide. So going on the internet can still be very annoying and slow. Have a wonderful week. Hugs Carrie

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  16. Oh its so wonderful in here. lOVE the Christmas look.. had to laugh about your time with a new computer.. brought back some memories of my first computer.. which is similar to your experience.. other than I had my son I could go to..which has been a blessing more times than I could say..
    I remember that everyone told me that I could never use all space in a 1.6meg hard drive.. I still laugh over that one.. as I have used up 3.. 2 mg.. hard drives.. "scary"..
    Sorry I haven't been in for awhile.. been busy with getting things ready for Christmas.. and watching my grandson.
    much love and soft hugs..

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  17. I forgot to leave ah comment!!! I am sorry. Great story and love that photo of your cats. Now did you get your decorating done? Great job on your blog. Now let's have some cocoa K?

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  18. As I read your essay I had John Denver's Christmas with the Muppets on the CD player...
    with your reindeer and the snow falling on your page, I'm afraid I'm bubbling over with Christmas spirit ow.

    It's my bedtime, and I probably won't be getting to sleep right away; poor Steve wil have to put up with me humming "Jingle Bells".

    We all have to navigate the insanity once we've gotten into the internet and all it entails, Jenny; I guess I've been one of the lucky ones, having had a fairly easy time of it. It does get better with time, I've found. (Yep, I have one of those "For Dummies" books, and it really DID help.

    Now, Toodie's suggestion about cocoa sounds good, but I'll have to wait until morning.

    Nutz...don't have any marshmallows...

    *sighs mightily*

    Sleep well, sweetie!

    8 )

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  19. Just checking in on you, girl. Hope all is right in your world. Love you bunches!

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