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Finally it comes to me.  It was a Packard Bell, 100Mhz with a 500meg hard drive and 8 meg of RAM built right onto the board (as if that was a plus).  It was 1995, and I lived in Brühl, Germany.  Had a nice 15” monitor too - color!  Back then I didn’t know any better, and I’m pretty sure the whole shebang cost somewhere around $1800 and we felt like we were getting a deal.  Windows 95 - not even 95a or 95b or even 95c.  Plain old 95.  And man, did we hate 95.  It’s nice how some things never change - I still hate Microsoft products, but I’m too lazy to change.  I bet I’m their target consumer - their whole marketing strategy is probably based on tree stumps like me.

Amazingly, there’s only been two computers between that one and this one.  The first was a Pentium II 400mhz, the first computer I ever built.  (It’s upstairs right now, loaded with Linux Mandrake 9.0.  I was going to try to learn Linux so I could switch to it, but it turns out I’m too lazy for that and don’t have time for the learning curve.) After that computer I was so enchanted with how easy it was to build a computer I started doing it for everyone I knew. 

That turned out to be a mistake.

What I didn’t realize was if you build something for someone, it’s like saving someone’s life.  You’re responsible for it f-o-r-e-v-e-r.  They feel like they can call you, any time of the day or night, and bitch because they don’t know how to work Windows… or any other bullshit piece of software they added.  At one point, I was giving free telephonic and in-person computer support to 13 different people.  And half of them weren’t even family.

I actually stopped talking to a high school friend I’d known for 20 years 3 years ago this week because of that very thing.  That was back when I used ICQ.  That chick used to call me and leave 5 minute long tortured messages on my answering machine about how her email wasn’t working right.  And I didn’t even build her computer, she bought a Gateway.

But this day, I was on the computer, and on the phone.  The phone call was the one that got me this job. The computer was on because it always was.  And then came the ICQ message, wanting to know what some buttons in ICQ were for.  I’d always used ICQ as a tool - when I was in Germany, it was a way for me to talk to my family without using the telephone.  We’d arrange times to meet online and chat (lucky us, we all type at least 80 words a minute so it was actually like chatting).  There were only four things I did with it - instant message my family, send them web pages, send them files, or chat.  The rest of the stuff that comes with ICQ I had no use for - and still don’t.

On a side note, I stopped using ICQ not long after that, and didn’t even load it up for a couple years.  Then when I went back to it a few months ago, I found someone had stolen my number.  Some kid in Turkey hijacked my number because it was low, and was using it for himself.  That pissed me off enough to yank it back. Can you believe that? Now I just go in there now and then to make sure no one has snarked it out from under me.

Anyhoo.  I msgd this chick back and told her I couldn’t talk right now, I was on an important phone call, and she got all upset and started ranting and raving about how she’s sorry we all can’t be as smart as I am (she’s got that right) and she’s sooooo sorry for bothering me and it’s fucked up that I’m too good to help her meet lonely freaks from halfway around the world (she didn’t exactly say that last bit but since that’s what she was using ICQ for, I extrapolated) and she’d never ask me for help ever again (I wish everyone who ever said that meant it).

My response to that was to block her from sending me messages, stop taking her phone calls, and never speak to her again.  My ex-father-in-law once wrote me a letter trying to warn me away from marrying my ex by telling me how cold the man was - that he’d (gasp) had girlfriends before and how he’d “cut them off with the precision of a surgeon’s knife”.  I never laughed so hard in my life as when I read that letter.  However cold he thought his son was, he doesn’t even compare to me.  Ruthlessness has it’s roots in selfishness, and I’m afraid I’ve got that market cornered. 

After that, as a survival measure I stopped telling people I knew anything about computers. That was the smartest thing I ever did.

So now, here I am with my new toy, and I haven’t even plugged it in yet. Let’s do that, wanna?