Bwahahahaha……… ZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!
Late Monday morning right before I was ready to hit the sack, my power went out. This was followed a second later by a very loud explosion. Having been through this enough, it was easy to put the two together and realize that a transformer had blown up somewhere nearby. Maybe the on in my backyard. There was only one way to find out…. look for the dead squirrel.
Blargh! I’m dead!
Only there wasn’t a dead squirrel to be found (Nor is there one in the photo above, if you thought I was being macabre). OK, the transformer must’ve blown up somewhere nearby. Either way, I’m stuck without the ability to run my white noise fan which means no sleep until someone gets out here to fix things. Well, the power guys finally showed up almost two hours later… and sure as heck, they head right for that pole in my backyard…
Highly paid professionals at work. Do not attempt this at home…
They have this big, long pole they use to fix the issue from the ground. The first thing they did with that pole was dislodge the fried squirrel who didn’t drop to the ground because he got trapped atop the transformer…
He’s dead Jim!
Alas, poor kamikaze squirrel… we hardly knew ye. There is no time to mourn, however, as I need to get some sleep so I can fill up the counters at Mecca with delicious, overpriced Halloween candy…
Not this shit from Halloweens past… I think it’s finally been banned by the FDA.
So I wake up that evening, fire up the ol’ desktop, and……
Um………………
(Keeps hammering the power button)
This isn’t good….
It’s dead Jim!
Apparently the abrupt power loss or power gain finally did in the only desktop computer I have ever had at my nest. Eight and a half years of service, reliability, and familiarity all up in a puff of smoldering mange. I had just splurged to replace my eight year old laptop a couple weeks ago, and now I was finally forced to do the inevitable and upgrade my main computer as well. When it rains, it fucking pours…
Oh no, you have first world problems! Boo fucking hoo, douchebag!
Apparently, all we bother to sell off the shelves at Mecca anymore is Hewlett Packard desktops. My family once had a computer where the hard drive just up and exploded. It was an HP. I’ve heard a lot of bad things about HP computers, but wasn’t in any position to pay more elsewhere, and I refuse to order anything expensive that has to be delivered to my home online. So, the HP it is…
It fits in perfectly with my nasty ass computer desk, doesn’t it?
I kept the old keyboard because I needed something I was familiar with, plus the new one looked too much like the crappy keyboard on the little red laptop that I can’t type worth a shit on. And so, unless I dig out the archaic laptop for old times sake, it’s goodbye to the Vista OS format that is the only thing I ever used since 2009. I loved the Firefox layout for Vista. I don’t have enough vulgar words to properly express what I think about the Windows 10 look. I expect a menu at the top of the screen with words like “Files” and “Bookmarks” and such that will bring up nice, crisp, clean dropdown menus for me to select what I want from. Why do I have to open a second dropdown menu to have access to all of my 69,000,000 bookmarks now? Did someone outlaw simplicity at Microsoft?
Oh, hey! I can see the rest of your bookmarks if I lay like this!
One of the main reasons I wanted to hang on to the old laptop as long as possible was for arting purposes. Having to purchase a new version of Photoshop is bad enough, but the bread and butter of what I use for everything from drawing to resizing images is good ol’ MS Paint. And to say the newer version of Paint is absolutely fucking useless would be like admitting the content of my blog is just a little bit messed up. I’ve already fixed that problem by finding a download for an older version of Paint online, though it’s the old XP edition that I haven’t used since Dubya was in office. At least the ten year old version is useful, whereas the Win 10 Paint is like Kim Kardashian… 99.9% looks and 0.000000000001% practical.
The remaining percentage is made up of fillers….. like birdshit.
The loss of my familiar art programs has pretty much killed off my so far futile attempt to revive the missing Thursday comic series for the time being. Oh, and uploading photos is going to be a real joy since this desktop has the hard drive built into the monitor and all of the plug-ins are in the back. So I have to pull out the big screen monitor just to hook up the USB cord. Heck, even the power button is a pain in the ass to operate! it’s located underneath the monitor on the left side and is level with the base, meaning that every time I want to turn my new play toy on, I have to feel underneath the screen to find the damn thing like I was trying to find the hidden button to open a secret passage…
I found it!
And speaking of great 80’s movies…. you know what else bugs me about Windows 10? The fact that it feels the need to pop up a message to let me know every time a program I put on my computer wants to do something. Yes, I know the photo uploader wants to start running because I just hooked up a whole camera full of squirrel pictures I’d like to put online. Yes, I would like to install the program off the disk I personally put into your optical reader. Yes, I can wipe my own ass, thank you. It’s like having my very own Col. Sandurz around to let me know my computer is preparing to do something and is awaiting my acknowledgement so it can take even longer for it to actually get that done…
Preparing preparations for preparing to prepare, sir!
Once I get all my old bookmarks back, those old passwords figured out, and find a way to make sense of this horrible mess of a layout…. I guess I’ll get used to it. After all… it’s not all bad. I no longer have to deal with a computer whose speed can be measured with a sundial, videos on YouTube have mysteriously stopped randomly buffering, and I can actually play games again that work just like they’re supposed to!
Unicorns for the WIN!!!
I guess I’ll survive, even if the squirrel who put me in this position didn’t….
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Poor squirrel. Why do they do that? LOL! That candy again!
I guess their only knowledge of how our electric grid works is how it helps them get from one place to another. I will mock that nasty ass candy every chance I get! I swear every house gave that stuff out in the 80’s!
Calm down and remember — all versions of Windows are the same. The differences are just on the surface. The art program is a different issue. None of those old programs will work on anything newer. But there are a LOT of decent free art programs online. No, really. There are. I wouldn’t lie to you! You mess with 10 for a while and it will look JUST LIKE YOUR OLD ONE. Really, no kidding. It took me a couple of weeks, but eventually, it got there. But of course, then there are downloads … I hate the downloads.
Yes…. the downloads. Oh, and in less than 48 hours I managed to pick up my first virus. In 8 and a half years, neither my desktop nor laptop ever got a virus that did anything obviously malicious… and yet I log on this evening and find a strange ad site replacing my homepage. I basically ran both machines without antivirus software and I still never had issues. This one, the trial version of McAfee could not find. If it was something I did last session, I figure it had to be the old Paint upload (which was verified malware free! Yeah…). So I unistalled it, changed my homepage back, restarted and it seems to be OK again. But we’ll see…… I want my old baby back!
First positive: You are still alive. You said so, so it must be true.
Second positive: You are unlikely to have a harddrive-crash with a brandnew computer – anytime soon, that is …
Third positive: It’s shiny and new (look squirrels .. oh .. sorry)
Now we get to the negatives: I bet you had content on that harddrive that just went up into smoke … Content you miss and cannot get back.
And you have to reinstall all of your usual programs on that new machine – which takes time, even with a newer, faster computer.
You had to buy a new computer – and as you work in a shop stuffing shelves I bet that’s not exactly something you really have found “at the back of the couch”.
You have to get used to new things – we all hate that, we are creatures of habit.
So, I think all in all you are still in the grieving phase of it … mourning your losses.
Therefore I will not congratulate you on your new, shiny toy (which you did not have on your wishlist) but express my commiserations. I had to upgrade my laptop last year – and miss all my photos which I had not saved elsewhere …
Yes, there was a ton of stuff on the old computer I’m never going to get back. I last saved the really important stuff to a flash drive around New Years, so I lost anything I did this year that I didn’t already upload to another website. I think what’s killing me most of all is remembering all the passwords… I relied so heavily on auto-log in, that I’m logging back in to these places for the first time in years.
Don’t I know that feeling from last year? I hear you, bro …
HP stands for hairy potter… and all their gadgets are haunted or eggs-plode… you need a magic wand to keep them in line ;o)
Yes, and with how big this monitor/hard drive is, when it egg-splodes, it’ll probably take my head off with it!
Poor squirrel 😦
I love how you’re complaining about Win 10 two years after everyone else 🙂
I recently had to ditch “old faithful” – Paint Shop Pro 8 (back when it was still Jasc) was with me for 10 great years, but the latest version of Win 10 nixed it. I finally invested in Photoshop Elements. Oh boy, it’s soooo much better 🙂
The old MS paint was great for pixel art, which is what all my stuff is based in. The newer version doesn’t work like that at all…. use the fill-in tool, and it leaves all kinds of white space near the borders. Rubbish!
A lot of my magic happens in Photoshop (which I’ll have to buy again at some point), but even in there I find the drawing function to be flawed compared to old Paint. And I just had to uninstall the old version I uploaded because I think it might’ve been tainted with adware…
NNOOO!!!! Having to relearn a entire new system sucks! I had to replace my keyboard a while back (too much pounding with my hooves) and it was a nightmare to just relearn that. And it was just a keyboard! But if feels off on my hooves. The other one fit my hooves just right. I know – there are bigger problems in the world but my world consists of a keyboard and yours a computer. What can I say my evil friend? We are two of a kind. XOXO – Bacon
That’s why I kept the keyboard I’d been using for so long! No matter what they say, there’s a difference between keyboards that make switching a pain in the butt. I’ll keep using this old relic until it finally breaks…
Botheration. You got troubles, that are temporary and not life-threatening. But make for a good rant.
Well, if my new ticking time bomb HP computer decides to explode just a couple feet from my face… my botheration just might become life threatening. It would make for an interesting news tidbit, though…
I feel your angst but at least your cat is chilled about everything…
Nothing bothers the cat unless I’m so distracted I forget to feed him….
No wonder you are called Evil…
I feel your pain. Have had my own frustrations with Windows 10 at work. After weeks of fighting, the whole computer was wiped clean and the old version of Windows reinstalled. Good luck when Windows 10 decides your password is incorrect. It’s coming….
The little red laptop already refuses to let me into my email account, even after I changed the password so I could log into it on the new computer. I blame Cortana, I think she can hear all the nasty things I say about her…
Happily I decided not to upgrade to 10 although they made me feel really BAD about not going with 10 back when it debuted. Tough……maybe I’ll eventually have to change but they will drag me kicking and screaming to THAT door believe me. Sorry you lost some stuff but YAY on the computer. If it makes you feel any better, I adore my HP Pavilion 23″ – no complaints – but then my ports, etc. are reachable and not in some awkward spot………change is rarely easy that’s for sure!
Pam
Both laptop and desktop had a hissy fit when the first thing I downloaded on both of them was Firefox. It’s the only browser I’ve used for the last 13 years and I need something familiar. I don’t care that they renamed Internet Explorer something fancier like Edge, I’m sure it’s still a shitty browser! I really have no idea what the HP people were thinking putting the only ports in the back… do people no longer import stuff via USB cord these days? Maybe they don’t and I’m just behind in the times…
Hard to imagine what design engineers are thinking…..maybe we really don’t WANT to know….but I suspect it’s “where should we go for lunch today???”……………..
Bummer on the untimely computer demise. Just when you get used to and actually like certain aspects of whatever you have, something like a dang squirrel tilts the whole thing into oblivion. Hope things level off for you without you stroking out first. Change sucks. Good luck. I’m going back to stroking and saying nice things about my Apple because I’m superstitious and hope the good juju carries over. For a long time.
My old computer may have felt threatened by the new laptop and conveniently had the hard drive equivalent of a heart attack. The whole fried squirrel on the power lines was just a ruse…
I still use my old Windows Vista on the big box I keep in the so called Office in my house(basically the junk room), I use it once a month to send a downloaded scan … I had another laptop that just died on me after 4 yrs. lost tons of shit(Windows 7 on that) Then I was forced to buy this laptop, a HP from Mecca, I can’t scan from my old printer onto here..supposedly the scanner is too outdated! Ba! I hate this windows 10, I keep typing an f whenever I try to type anything with a g fff ! Fuck! Sorry you lost all that stuff, pain in the proverbial Ass !
Nothing should ever be outdated! If the new technology doesn’t allow for the older technology…. then it is NOT an improvement over the old way! These young punks in silicon valley will realize how wrong this ever changing way is when they get older!
Poor little squirrel! Poor old faithful computer, too. Sorry to hear of all your problems, and seems like lots of people are having troubles of all kinds lately. Good luck with the new one and Windows 10 (ugh) 🙂
Thanks. I might figure it out before I have to get my next computer…
I feel for ya! I hate it when things aren’t where they should be. My tablet updated on Friday and it changed my already infuriating virtual keyboard. It took me at least thirty seconds to find the apostrophe For the word aren’t. And why the capital f in that last sentence? Grrrrr! I plan on running Windows 7 on my desktop for as long as I can get the thing to run. If it makes you feel any better, my desktop is an HP and it’s been running maintenance free since 2009. I just use the free Microsoft Security Essentials program and I don’t have trouble with viruses, unless my kids use my computer.
As for the poor squirrel, RIP little friend. 😢
Poor squirrel.
That pop up thing has been happening since Windows 7 came out. You do get used to it, eventually, but it does mean you have to keep an eye out when doing updates or whatever.