5 Things I Like About My New Computer

In an attempt to bond with my new computer and make an effort to be friendly, I’ve decided to come up with five things I like about it:

1. It is undeniably pretty. In fact, if it were a real person, it would probably be Keira Knightly. Or Orlando Bloom, if it were a boy. I still haven’t decided.
2. It is portable. I can sit on my bed or in my comfy, comfy chair and be on the Internet or playing a computer game or typing.
3. It’s faster than my old computer.
4. It can write DVDs, though I haven’t yet.
5. It…um…well, it…Oh! I like the way the keyboard feels.

There. See? I can be nice.

I’m starting with the negative post first…

…so that the post at the top will be the happy one even if it means they’re out of order chronologically.

I had a great Thursday. Most of Friday was great – I had a headache for most of the day, but I managed to get in some shopping with my mom (got a few cute tops from Anthropologie – yay!) and then, about 40 miles away from being home, the Malfunction Indicator Light in my car comes on. Hopefully it won’t be anything too bad or expensive because, not only have I just bought a rather pricey laptop computer which I still don’t quite know how to work, I just spent money on gas to and from Chicago, a few books (which I’ll talk about next post), a ticket to a concert, souvenirs at said concert, new clothing purchased this weekend and last weekend, and a full-on copy of Windows for the computer that I don’t quite know how to work in order to get it to do what I need it to do (run my archaic version of WordPerfect – which I know is silly, but I am a superstitious writer and it’s the only thing I will use for word processing).

Janis, I think you’re the only one out there who won’t think it’s silly. I hope.

Then today I unplugged my external hard drive from my desktop and brought it out to my parents house to try and move all my music files over so I could finally get iTunes up and running on my Mac. After great success in getting WordPerfect (which I only have on floppy disks which no computer has a drive for anymore) installed on the Windows side of my Mac, I plugged in the external hard drive, plugged it into my Mac, and pushed the power button on the hard drive.

Nothing happened.

I pushed it again. I pressed my ear up to the hard drive, desperate to hear the reassure whir of little hard drive whatevers doing their job.

Nothing. So between me unplugging it at my apartment and plugging it back in at my parents house, it completely and utterly died, taking along with it ALL of my music files. Of which I had quite a few. I don’t know how many, but just to give you an idea – I have a 60G iPod and I’ve been having to take stuff off to put new stuff on for a while now. So, yeah. A lot.

Fortunately, despite the fact that you’re not supposed to be able to get things off your iPod and on to your computer, there are ways around it. So I managed to save all the things that were still on my iPod, but I’ve lost the stuff that was just on the hard drive. Most of it was things that I’d ripped from my CDs, but I can’t be sure what’s missing since there’s just so much. I suppose anything that I notice I’m missing, I can add back and just figure that if I don’t miss it, I don’t need it, but still! And then it took me a while to get iTunes to cooperate (which it’s still not enthusiastic about doing, but I think we’re getting there… We better be getting there, anyway.)…

Lame.

Also had a headache for most of the day today. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I’m just worrying about what’s going to break next. I think I won’t be too surprised if my TV explodes or something…

I guess I should tell you…

…that I’ve been posting from my new computer for a few days now. My new MacBook computer.

I didn’t say anything earlier because right now we are in the hate portion of our love/hate relationship. I know that once I figure out how to do things with it, we will move into the love phase of things, but right now it’s just frustrating to not know how to use it! I can’t even post a picture of it because I DON’T KNOW HOW!

But it is very pretty – white, to match my iPod, of course.

I’m hoping to get everything moved over on Sunday (going shopping on Saturday in Chicago with Jillian from work – and also meeting her fiance’s single, big-city-lawyer, college roommate at his housewarming party while we’re up there…). Right now all I can do is be on the Internet which actually gets old pretty quickly. So after I move everything over on Sunday, I’m going to make an appointment at the Apple store for my free half-hour, how-the-hell-do-I-make-it-do-what-I-want, introduction session after which hopefully everything will be hunky-dory between the two of us.

I just have to keep remembering that I used to hate my iPod and now I can’t imagine life without it.

Also, since my iPod has a name (Hadley Swain), I sort of feel like the iBook should have one, too. Anyone have any suggestions?

ETA: Aaaaaand, just over two months later, I realise that it’s not an iBook, it’s a MacBook. Really, it’s amazing that I can function in this technology-heavy world…