Murphy Comes Around

When life throws you curves, you have to learn to bend. And when Murphy pays you a visit and lays down his law, you should invite him in for a drink-- after a while everything will be just fine again.

There is no mistake in that the Computer Stop is right next door to the liquor store. After you exit the computer store, you're likely to either be celebrating the purchase of a brand new computer buddy or (like me) you're going to be lamenting the death of a hard drive. In my case, the store name might as well have been a direct order: Computer, Stop!

But earlier, I had invited Murphy in for a drink to discuss these developments and harangue him about feeling the need to invade my life, and he started being nice. He explained how I now had the opportunity to get a bigger hard drive and to say goodbye to all those files I've been meaning to clean up for ages. Pouring me another Guiness, he also suggested I go ahead and get another half gig of RAM. Feeling much better about all this, I made my way over to the Computer Stop first thing this morning, to find that I was second in line and that computers had been dropping like flies.

Luckily, the Chinese man whose name I did not catch is an expert and quickly diagnosed my problem, installed a new drive and more memory and sent me home to reinstall XP. Only.... Murphy must have really enjoyed our little tete-a-tete, because I got home and could not get the machine to boot. Not only that, but my installation CDs were for upgrades only. On my second phone call back to the store, my Chinese friend said, "maybe you want pay seventy-five dolla?" and I agreed. I'd pay another $75 to have him get it installed because I was getting a bit weary of the company of little Murphy.

Back to the store I went. This time I was invited into the Inner Sanctimus Computerium where everything buzzes and there are more electrical cables than seeds in a pomegranate. Luckily I had planted some sock yarn in my purse, and I was able to fertilize it while I was waiting. The sock grew at least two inches!

I had heard another employee mention my guy's upcoming trip to China, so I made pleasant conversation by asking him about it. Honest to betsy, I think sometimes these people never get spoken to. I can only imagine that people are so frustrated when they see him that they rarely say nice things. But by the time I left, my computer was booted, XP was half installed, my Chinese friend was smiling, I was smiling, and it cost me absolutely nothing.

Back at home, I successfully completed the installation without a hitch, my computer is so fast it makes me dizzy, and all is well.

Sure, I've got a lot of things to do all over again, but think of the opportunity for improvement!

I returned to knitting on Project Gray last night, which some of you might have recognized as the High Priestess Aheerya. I will be glad when these sleeves are done, but not so glad to know that I still have the front to knit!

In an effort not to be overtaken by Caroline, I have also been working on the last sleeve of Saga Rose. Hopefully it will be finished in time for the next Ferals, although by now I'm sure I've misplaced the buttons. It's perfect weather for cardigans right now; in fact it's perfect weather for knitting in general.

The ASOF group has decided to do a Lopi knit along or an Icelandic-style item, and I think I have settled on creating a wave-pattern scarf with my varying natural shades of unspun Icelandic. The -Along begins October 15th and I can't wait to see what everyone is going to end up with!

Posted by Sheila at October 5, 2004 01:43 PM Posted to Computers and Programming | Saga Rose | Stories | Texture: Project Gray | TrackBack