This morning I had an idea of what I wanted to blog about today. I had it planned in my mind as I went to take a shower after my usual facebook check in. After showering I came back to my desktop computer and moved the mouse to wake it up, after it went into sleep mode. Nothing...black screen. I moved the mouse some more. Still nothing! The computer was on. The monitor was on. I felt a little panic setting in as I turned the monitor off and then back on. NO SIGNAL it said. Uh oh! I checked all of the plugs etc. and then turned off and then back on my computer. It started up as usual but still nothing on the monitor. My computer is only a year old. It can't be dead, where as my monitor is several years old. That has to be it! My monitor is dead!
About that time my hubby appears on the scene. " HELP!!! My computer or monitor is dead but I don't know how to tell which one." I see the look of dread on his face because my family knows if my computer dies it's not a good day. My daughter shows up about then and upon hearing what the problem is she quickly leaves the area. My hubby, who is good at diagnosing most computer problems, tells me to disconnect the monitor and pass it over to him. He hooks it up to his computer and it's fine. That can only mean one thing! It's my computer! I'm already mentally planning where I am going to rush out to, to buy my next computer, when he tells me to hand my computer over and he'll look at it. He hooks my computer up on his desk and it starts up just fine. Hmmm, so my monitor is fine and my computer is fine??? What is going on? He thinks that maybe one of the connections was loose or maybe the power supply messed up for a little bit.
After handing my monitor and computer back to me, I hook it all back up and it works just fine. *big sigh of relief* from all of us. Keep in mind that I do have a laptop as well, but it just isn't the same to me as my desktop computer.
At that time I decided to change my blog subject to computers and how some of our lives seem to revolve around them.
My love of computers started many years ago, and when I say many I mean more than 30 years ago. My husband, who at that time was only my boyfriend, had a little Texas Instrument computer. He had one of those little mystery games on it that had no pictures or anything like that on it. It was just words. No sound, just words. It would tell you about a scene and then you would type in instructions, like go left, open the cupboard, run like hell, or something like that. I loved that game!
Later on, after we were married and had kids, we had another computer. The games on this computer were similar but they actually had pictures. I loved those games too. Over time more interesting and involved games appeared like Sim Coaster and assorted Brain Games. My daughters and I loved those games. Soon the actual Sim game came out (a lot more on that in a future blog) and that was a huge turning point in our household. Suddenly, one computer didn't work for our family of four. One computer turned into two and then three and then soon everyone had their own desktop computers.
We had another phone line added to our home so we could be on the computer and still make calls at the same time. Remember dial up? That awful connecting noise it made. It is something best forgotten. Thank God for cable!
Over the years the computer became our link to the world. The girls did their homework research on it, because who goes to the library anymore, as well as their reports. We played online games. Joined online forums. Made online friends. Sent emails. Played games on our computers, some of those were online and others weren't. Searching the web became a daily event.
When those computers acted up, it was a tragedy. What about the music we listened to on them? Or the papers that we stored in them? Or those games we had installed that literally took hours to reinstall? What events on Facebook were we missing? Hubby, would painstakingly work on them or we'd have to buy a new one and then all was good again in our home.
My Mom thinks that our computers are the root of all evil. She has never understood our love of them. She can't understand the friends we've made through our computer use, or the games we play. But we all know that they've become a part of our lives for better or worse.
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