Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Computer Problems: a commentary

I?m not sure, but I might be sort of losing it. I have a new laptop, a mystical, magical and oh so useful laptop. Yesterday I spent an hour and a half on my cordless phone, hunched down, staring at the screen, answering the questions that Andrew was asking me. Andrew works for the company that provides my, not my dsl service, I think my server. Or my network. Or something. I was trying to explain to him what I needed. ?everytime I try to send audio attachments of just a few megabytes in my email program they don?t arrive at their destination. They just disappear.? Andrew pondered this deeply. He has such a nice and easy going voice. It never ceases to amaze me that any of these guys that I get on the phone know all the right questions to ask. And they seem to genuinely enjoy their jobs. Andrew, and Nick and Ben and Adam all LIKE coaching middle aged women and men into trying to understand how to work their new computers properly.

If I can stay in a Zen like mode while I talk to Andrew, I can learn quite a bit. I have to be open to letting HIM ask the questions. Sometimes I feel proud, almost cocky about how much I understand about what he?s asking and what we?re doing. Other times I get lost, like I used to in Trigonometry in highschool. I follow the strand of thought for a while and then POOF! It?s gone. I don?t get it anymore. And I just want the damn thing to work. It?s enough to be learning the audio software programs?the editing and mixing down? do I have to conquer the intricacies of the email system too?

That?s when I feel like I?m losing it. Yesterday I had this fantasy of taking the laptop and tossing it out the window while I was driving my daughters and their friends to their trapeze class. I pictured it flying through the air and landing in a ditch along the freeway. I would throw my head back and laugh as if I had finally taught it a lesson. I had showed it who was boss. Uh oh. So now I?m thinking that MY COMPUTER has a personality and would experience emotions if I abandoned it? That?s a little scary.

Andrew and I figured out something, please don?t ask me what, but we reconfigured a configuration or something and now my audio attachments are arriving at their destinations, mostly intact. Okay so I had to send one by webmail and I had to FTP the other one. But they got there for godsake.

I?m working on some self imposed deadlines to get a website updated. I have learned more and more about my neat little laptop even just today. I can stream audio while I work, and I can adjust the desktop to look the way I want it to. I?ve decided to keep this little gizmo in my possession, nurturing it and treating it right. I can call those boys anytime I need to and wait in line on the phone to get one of them to pay complete attention to my computer issues du jour.

I might not be losing it after all. I might just be living in the twenty first century, putting information out into the world just like you are, adding to the buzz of our virtual society, trying to stay grounded, trying to use my laptop as a tool, trying to keep it all in perspective. Trying to stay calm.