Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Sept. 2, 2013

When Systems Crash

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Satan created computers. He did it because he was bored, and wanted to watch senior citizens pull what remained of their hair out and hit their heads repeatedly against whatever walls were handy. It all has to do with the human brain, and what happens to it when the human in question ages, and how all of the bad stuff that happens is made much worse when his computer crashes. Satan knew it would happen, he designed it that way.

Regardless of what my wife may tell you, I have a fairly normal human brain. It is about the size of a coconut, or maybe a walnut, depending on the humidity. Whatever the case, that brain, just like your average random nut, has only so much room in it. In computer terminology, I guess you'd call it “storage capacity.” When a human is very young, his brain is basically empty. He has plenty of space for new information, and can soak it up like sponge. As he ages, his brain fills up with things like the entire Bat Masterson theme song and all of the Maypo commercials. This is valuable information, and by the time he reaches sixty, he is almost completely full of it. By which I mean full of valuable information. He has little room for new stuff. That is why this morning it took awhile for me to remember where I'd left one of my shoes, but later, while sitting at the breakfast table, my brain browser reached way back into the obsolete file and retrieved the words “Teegarden and Van Winkle.” There was no reason for my brain to remember those two, except that they cut a record back in the early '70s called “My Last Name is Arted,” or “Passing Gas.” I had no need for that information, but since I'd learned it when I was younger, and much more empty-headed, it was calcified into my cranium. My shoe, on the other hand, had been misplaced the night before, and that was new information, which seldom registers anymore.

So a couple nights ago our computer crashed. It didn't literally crash into anything, but first our little mouse died, our cursor refused to curse, and eventually the screen went black. So I did what I always do when some horrible computer-related event happens, I said a bad word. It didn't help, so I went to Step 2 and turned the computer off, waited for a few minutes, and then turned it back on. No improvement. Then I followed step 3, which involved turning the monitor upside down and shaking it vigorously. Again, nothing. So I just jumped ahead to step 14, which is where I always wind up anyway, and called for my son, David. David is 36, and grew up in a computerized world, so he is familiar with much of the computer terminology. Whereas, when it comes to computer terminology, I am familiar with Teegarden and Van Winkle.

I tried to explain to David, in the very best technological terms, what was wrong and what I thought caused it. “It's broke!” I said. From that point the conversation went downhill. It went downhill because my son, whom I played a large part in bringing into this world, and whose diaper I used to change, now was talking to me as though I were a two-year-old. You see, he had a plan to repair the damage and I wanted to know what it was he intended to do, since it was indeed my computer. To his credit, he did try to explain what he was doing. He said “I'll walk you through it.”

But again, we were speaking two different languages. He was talking computer, and I was stuck back in the ice age with English. Take “password,” for example. I had one, for the operating system, and for me one was enough. But no, every time something new was installed on our computer, Marilyn had to have a completely different one. There were passwords for the operating system, for Youtube, for Facebook, for e-mail, for eBay, for something called Amazon, and on and on and on. And somewhere there was a little notebook containing all of our passwords, but God only knew where it was. David said only an idiot would use just one password, and Marilyn agreed. I felt confident that nobody would ever figure out that original operating system password because it involved a troop of monkeys and the initials of an obscure Egyptian paleontologist named Abdullah who was adopted by an Irish family named O'Dell. But of course, since my computer was also Marilyn's computer, her vote and David's for the multiple password scheme had always held. And when David asked me for the password for our e-mail, I could only scratch my head.

And then, when it became clear to me that David was installing another Windows system and needed to register a few things, I had to make serious inquiries into just what it was I had to register, and with who, and why? Most of these registrations needed passwords, too, and my questions were mostly of the “huh,” “why,” “WHAT?” and “would you repeat that slowly” variety. I was getting a severe headache.

At one point, David suggested putting a word processor onto Marilyn's iPad so I could write using a cordless keyboard. It sounded fine to me, so I asked if that iPad had the Word Perfect program on it, and he said I needed a nap.

So, realizing that my brain's storage capacity had reached critical mass and could not accommodate even one more stinking computer term, I agreed, and headed for the bedroom.

As it turned out, what David had said was that I needed an “app,” which is computerese for a “software application,” but only when talking about remote devices, which, I guess, are always located somewhere else. Regular computers do not have “apps,” but they do have “applications,” for which “app” is short ... for.

So, to summarize, even with having to stop every few minutes to answer our doofus questions, David finally got the computer back up and running. Within a year or two Marilyn and I will probably have this new system figured out, by which time I'm sure that it will be just like us.

Obsolete.