Digitally Dumb

I'm pretty sure my computer is retarded. I'm sorry, that's not right anymore. I'm pretty sure my computer is mentally challenged. (See, I can be politically correct. Once a year or so.)

My computer and I usually get along pretty well but every once in awhile it will do something really dumb and tick me off. Something like pop up a random dialog box while I'm trying to do something. I can understand the pop up ads if I'm actually browsing the web, but the random ones? They're like the Gomer Pyle pop up ads. They're the doofy ones that missed their cues and then laugh like a goober when you ask them about it.

Every once in awhile my mouse stops responding. My whole page will freeze and being the completely patient person that I am, I will get frustrated and start madly clicking all over the page. (Because if I click in just the right spot, it'll fix everything.) After the 97th click my computer will give me one annoyed beep, which usually freaks me out like I'm breaking it or something and stops the clicking. I figure if it was mad enough to beep at me, maybe I should knock it off. Like when you would poke your sibling in the car and the mom with the ninja eyes caught you and yelled at you.....which would work for 40 seconds until you started the whole process over again.

There's also times when my computer will do something scary and I'm always unsure of how to react. Like tonight when I'm on Amazon looking for new books for the kindle, since I'll be on vacation and have plenty of time to actually read, and I get a mean, scary looking red box notification from my Norton program. (Internet security) And the box says something about a Trojan threat. So now I'm thinking either my computer is planning a wild night or I've got a virus threat. There's nothing scarier to me than a virus threat because instantly I think, "Crap! I never burned those pictures to a disc like I said I was going to. I'm going to lose half my kids pictures!" Whether your computer crashes or you buy a new one, starting over just sucks. You finally got your programs to do what you want, you know where all your icons are by memory, you can successfully navigate iTunes, and you've sat through hours of downloading the old programs already. Who wants to sit through that again?

To make matters worse, after the error message came up I tried to get into my email and got another scary message box. They couldn't find my email. What the hell? What do you mean you can't find it? It's right there. Right where it's always been. I tried to x out of the message and it would not go away! It was like the haunted dialog box from Trojan virus hell. I would x out the box but it would pop back up half of a nano second later in the same exact spot. Now I'm surely thinking something very, very bad has happened. So I shut down the computer (With my fingers crossed behind my back for luck!) and turned it back on. Apparently that small mini vacation was all it needed. Perhaps it was feeling overtaxed by my Amazon kindle searching.

So, Dell and I made amends, for now. I'm sure tomorrow he'll try my patience again by trying to tell me that a shock wave app has crashed. Until then, I really need to find a blank disc for those pictures.....