Am I giving in to TECHNOLOGY?
...don 't tell anyone, but I've got a LAPTOP computer!

My second computer meltdown inside of a month left a bad taste in my mouth, rendering me unable to post idiotic things (such as this post), unable to answer e-mails, but most importantly, unable to buy things I could probably live without on EBAY. (Hey, I've got 163 'positive feedbacks' on Ebay; I'm trying for 200. Or 300. Ack!) I didn't want to take my desktop to Ed and Joe's backstreet computer service and gambling parlor (which is how I envision most computer repair outlets are run)...that, combined with my trademark impatience (I hate to wait for anything! It's taking me too long to type this post! Double-ack!!!) led me to go to the neighborhood Radio Shack (which I'm pretty sure doesn't have a gambling parlor), to seek out a new computer.

And a new computer I did find. I had first gone to the local Staples' (which is big enough to house several gambling parlors and an airplane hangar), and right away I noticed, there were no desktop computers to be found. None. Zip. Nada. By this time I was foaming at the mouth, not a good thing since drool can corrupt a computer keyboard. There was a Radio Shack store nearby, but you guessed it, no desktops! "Geez", I thought..."am I gonna hafta go LAPTOP here?", and "go laptop" was indeed what I did. I had no trouble finding a minimum wage worker who was drooling (not on a computer keyboard), at the prospect of selling me everything under the sun, plus more stuff that I didn't need. Actually, the clerk looked like a former used car salesman, only there's more money in computers, which is why he's at Radio Shack. So I bought a Hewlett-Packard Laptop computer, and that's where it is as I type this...in my lap with the TV blaring away in the background. Let's see...that's a labor-saving computer being used by its owner who is sitting in a La-Z-Boy rocker/recliner...is there a theme here?

The clerk also tried to sell me accessories...he was panting, not believing his good fortune at selling me something, and he was on a roll..."how about a computer CASE so you can take your computer mountain-climbing or deep-sea diving???" Uhhhh, not right now..."do you want to take advantage of our EXTENDED SERVICE for only a FEW DOLLARS MORE which will help you take your computer all the way up to Armageddon?" Uh, I'm spending a lot right now, so let me think about that for a while..."oh, come on, you just gotta have THIS; you really need THAT, and you really should have THIS OTHER THING", he was saying, while frothing at the mouth and trying not to drool on the glass counter...and I told him, "let me come back later on so I can see what else I need." So I bought the laptop computer. UPWARDS OF $600!!! In the flash of a brief moment, Radio Shack quickly became Radio SHOCK. But I'm now online. With one of these little gizmos...


I'll tell ya, this doggone little flat keyboard is taking some getting used to. Remember, I learned to type on an old Royal 440 typewriter, which was basically constructed out of cast-iron. Someday, after the big nuclear meltdown happens, and humanity is wiped out, and there's nothing left, I wouldn't be surprised to see, along with the cockroaches, an old Royal 440 typewriter sitting there innocuously on the ultra-charred terra firma. But, back to the keyboard...it's flat. FLAT, I SAY!!! And, half the time, my fingers don't know where they are, resulting in such dilapidated keyboardisms such as "lkantrm q4powe7trnq##%yhGTFEW" (my car uses tires made of banana peels) or "nfr85r4oghjw jgyioejme ghjri5FJMbcju587&" which is gibberish for "President Bush would be smarter if he had a brain transplant with a Foster Farms Chicken!" (see the subtle way I snuck in a political observation there?)

I'm making a lot more typing errors on this little miniature keyboard that was obviously designed for hunt-n-peckers rather than touch typists, because if you're typing with one finger, all the keys are closer together so you can more easily find the letter you need to complete a word in your doctoral thesis or whatever. But my fingers aren't used to a distance of only .09098435 centimers between keys. That ain't a lot, for sure. Not only that, there is no MOUSE. That means, with the touch of a finger, I can slide my finger along a touch pad, one inch away from where my hands are now, and move the mouse-arrow. No longer do I actually have to LIFT MY ARM and MOVE A MOUSE. How lazy is that? Am I becoming a techno-slave here? How about, I go and find a voice module which will actually perform all my typing so I don't have to use my fingers at ALL? So I must already be on the way to becoming a formless, shapeless blob of tissue, aren't I?

Anyway, I do have a serious question for all of you who are into the latest, gotta-have-it, cain't-do-without-it things, and here 'tis...this computer is "Windows Vista Updatable", and I can have a free Vista download if I want it. Well, not long ago I was running Windows 98, and then I began running Windows XP...and now they want me to switch to Vista? SHOULD I GO AHEAD AND DOWNLOAD "WINDOWS VISTA"? IS IT BETTER THAN "XP"? WILL "XP" GO OUT OF DATE ANYTIME SOON"? I need someone to tell me what I should do; I'm so corn-fused I'm about ready to drool on my computer, and that wouldn't be a pretty sight. I suppose new things aren't hard to get used to, however...this blogsite has been trying to get me to open a GOOGLE E-MAIL account, and I held off as long as I could, until the other day, when 'blogger.com' told me, "we are forcing you to go Google, and if you don't, we'll cut your blog off at the KNEES!" Ulp...okaaaay....so now I have a Google e-mail account I'll never use. I just hope someone out there can't google my e-mail!
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Finally, the Stupor bowl is happening in a few short hours (note my posting time below); I believe Indianapolis will win by 10 points. Peyton needs a Super Bowl trophy, after all. Otherwise he'll wallow in obscurity like the ultra-rich, ever-present-on-TV Dan Marino. We wouldn't want that, would we? Although, those commercials featuring Peyton Manning are quite good...and, for us Beatles enthusiasts, there'll be a Super Bowl commercial saying you can get the Beatles on I-Pod; I don't care about that, but there might actually be either new music by the Beatles or a new collection of the old stuff available in the next few months (knowing Apple Corps, the Beatles umbrella organization, that second option is most likely). Still, that'll give me a reason to watch, even if one team is leading the other 150-13 two minutes into the 2nd quarter. Hmmm...new Beatles stuff...now that's something to drool about.