Linda Blair and the sound of silence

Well it happened again. My partner and I had a blowout. It was a bad one this time. Worse than the one in August that sent him schlepping his hard drive and memory chips into the arms of another. Sure we got back together on August 19th and I talked with you about it then. I didn’t say anything more afterward because I wanted to move on with our lives but it was different. Things between us were strained ever since that little indiscretion but that was to be expected and we were making a go of things. He was moody. He hid things from me. He was unusually quiet. I thought he would come around, that he had just lost his drive. I probed and prodded looking deep into his mainframe but he remained silent.

I sought advice from others. I wondered what I had done or how we could make it right again. I wondered if I would ever hear his tinny awkward voice again. I dug deep, lurking around sleazy forums late at night surviving on coffee and cold pizza. Finally I found the torrid truth of what had gone on that week he was with another. He had given his driver to someone other than me. The sound driver was missing from his fun package and he didn’t want to talk about it.

I was crushed, lost and completely without sound. At first I didn’t mind the long silent hours we spent together. I thought I could wait, perhaps he would come around or we might find a new kind of communication. I bought new speakers but he refused my offer. I brought in skilled help but it was too late. I tried taking us back to the day he came back to me. Maybe “they” said I could go back to the time when he communicated his hopes and dreams to me, back to when the music played for us. The problem was deeper than I had ever imagined.

It seemed that the digital demon from Satan’s horde had marked my baby and he would never be the same again. That evil tormenting creature that took his sweet blistering time returning my one and only to me last month had played fast and loose with his preferences and installed an evil I had never known before. I was more than annoyed with that blasted little icon that popped up every five fricking minutes telling me where to click so I could buy their cheesy little product or how it popped up every single time it diverted a hacker sneeze or drive by cyber attack so I could marvel at it’s animal prowess. I counted the days till that little slimy spawn of digital regret finally expired. I spent my time researching and selecting the best and the brightest replacement. Oh, we would be safe but it would be on our terms and not some stranger plying his wares from a cramped strip mall store front.

And this is where the real nightmare began. The slimy digital regret had finally expired and I promptly went to the install/uninstall programs and yanked that creep out of there. I then blissfully installed my shiny new knight of digital defense. Well that little creep was not uninstalled! He was still lurking in there deep in the crevices and when my new guy rode his white stallion onto the stage that rotten little sleaze attacked. There was a great battle. It was Armageddon in there. My keyboard was mortally wounded. The mouse lay useless on the battlefield and user accounts was lost to oblivion. The monitor had gone an eerie blue safety mode with the foreign user name “Owner.” There was no way to reach anything. No mouse, no keyboard and no idea what the pass code for “owner” was even if I could get anything to work. The battle was over. We had lost.

So there I was with no key board, no mouse and no user accounts. I managed to get the mouse working with a little retro fitting connection and activated the on screen keyboard but it was a hollow victory. Somehow actual programs had been deleted and there was no going back. Where there should have been files or programs, user accounts or system restore, there was nothing, it was just blank. I would like to say the shock wore off and I knew what to do but that wasn’t the case. I was on the phone talking to those nerdy heroes at the Geek Squad only to find they had never heard of this, I should bring it in.

I handed the poor possessed thing over to the Geek at the counter. It spun its DVD player around and spit pea soup up on his clean white shirt. I just smiled and shrugged. I had to get home to clean up the fly infestation and write a thank you note to Linda Blair.

I don’t know how many priests had to be called in or how many buckets of pea soup were ultimately expelled but eventually I got my little buddy back. A few –read “way too many”- dollars were sacrificed on the alter of modern technology and some irreplaceable files were forever lost. I certainly hope I have not lost any of you who have been so wonderful in following my little blog. We are back in the saddle here at Bluegate Gardens and looking forward to next posting.

Oh, and I believe that the strip mall dwelling digital demon who came between my little buddy and I, well he holds a very special place in hell where the only communication technology is smoke signal and banana leaf.