It seems as though it was only yesterday, probably because it was, when I said, “Buffalo,” (I always call myself Buffalo when I’m talking to myself rather than the little voices in my head). In case you’re wondering, I was sitting at my computer whilst having this conversation. “Buffalo, this has been a damned good computer. It is a tough little bastard. You should oughta write a letter to Gateway telling them about it.”

It has been a good computer. It survived all the bumps and temperature extremes of the ride-a-bout. It’s been rained on, sunned on, dusted on, and used for a pillow once or twice. It’s been bounced and abused and taken care of in a way that would make a geek scream like an opera diva with his jewels in a vise. And it has never given me more than two cents worth of trouble.

You know what’s coming next, don’t you?

I got up this morning, fired the little dude up and it locked up tighter than … supply your own descriptor on this one. I ain’t going where I was headed. I don’t know the technical term for what was wrong with it. If you’re really curious, ask Kat. Whatever it was couldn’t be fixed with soft words, not that it heard any from me, or a swift kick – and I was sorely tempted. Kat went looking for whatever the stuff we needed is called.

Do you have any idea how freakin’ much crap I had on this poor little guy? There were thousands of pictures, reams and reams of documents, and tons of music.

Do you have any idea how long it takes to transfer all that stuff to a memory thingie, put it on another computer, and then fill the stick thing up again?

I know the answer. A long damned time.

Then I had to shove this disk into the CD drive and then sit here and watch over a year’s worth of data being ground to shreds. After that, I watched as the little dude was reborn.

I was foolish enough to think that was the end of it. All I needed to do was reload my crap and get on down the virtual highway. That wasn’t quite the way it worked. Apparently, there were a fairly significant number of programs to download before I could do what I wanted to do.

It is pretty much a rip to spend bucks on a computer and then not be able to use it until you spend more bucks buying the software that will actually make it do the things it is supposed to do. In case you’re wondering, it takes a whole lot of time to install all that crap.

So, here we are. Nigh onto 2100 hours and I’m just now up and running.

Life is sweet – but damnit to hell, I want sympathy!