my seven computers
"what!?!?!?" I can imagine you saying. well, please, imagine me saying it right back. you, I imagine, are surprised, maybe even appalled, that anyone would own seven computers. I am astonished, shocked, astounded that I have not appreciated them before. really? (I searched my list of titles and did not find "seven" or any combination with "computer" that seemed appropriate.) yes. I have seven computers. no, I do not need seven computers. but as I faced retirement, I faced a dilemma or maybe a lemma with more than two points. (I just grinned at you.) a multilemma. you see, since 1965 I had worked - or played - with a computer, and for most of that time with more than one computer. I was accustomed, if you will, to the joys and pains of dealing with more than one operating system, more than one user interface, more than one way of dealing with files and directories. looking back on it, I suppose a sane person would have sighed and settled for having a computer with a big enough keyboard for a working person's hands, and having a smart phone. that sane person might have welcomed the simplification in his life. and - who knows? - might be drooling now, or staring out the window, or heck! might be taking dance classes with Lindy on a round-the-world cruise on a tramp steamer or something other than a cruise ship. sure, we can imagine a lot of different stories for alt-Wyatt in that parallel universe, right? but I didn't do that. I decided to get a bevy of computers, partly because I already had a start on that bevy. I didn't pick seven as an end number, I was not a system engineer about this at all. I updated my "main" computer, the Dell that had sorta sometimes occasionally temperamentally worked even though it had been that year's "monster" laptop that could do anything the year I bought it - I bought an H-P Envy and promptly renamed it my H-P NV. (I made sure it was technically capable of supporting the about-to-become new Windows 10. so far it does. although like all "old" hardware, it's beginning to limp a little. you see, a generation in hardware is about a year and a half. if you have a computer that is a year and a half old, there is something new and better for every component in it, and new computers of the same approximate cost have at least one "standard feature" that yours doesn't and yours probably can't be modified to add it. sorry. engineers can't help it. they hardly get finished building a completely new toy, unheard-of-ly better than anything available on the market, than they look it and say, "this could be faster, that could do more, and this other thingy could be replaced with a super-geewhiz-whatchamacallit I haven't even invented yet." really. they can't help it. I know just enough about engineering to have felt a little of that myself. anyway, similar thinking would wind up with me having also Microsoft's then-new Surface Pro 3, and a MacBook Air, and an iPad mini, a Google Chromebook Pixel and a Pixel C. (oh my goodness! I have an old Chromebook too, I don't think I count that one.) (Oh, for heaven's sake! I have a Dell Latitude XT2 which I definitely don't count any more. gracious!) which leaves my PDA, my smartphone, my android Moto X Pure. oddly enough we get along just fine, no apparent jealousies or animosities. just in case I confused you, let me list the seven in one place, here: the H-P NV, the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, the MacBook Air, the iPad mini, the Chromebook Pixel, the Pixel C, and the Moto X Pure. seven computers, six operating systems, six user interfaces, seven different states of the art, and all of them old enough to be replaced. my treasurer will have a fit when she reads that, but she'll get over it. or she always has. meanwhile I look at my collection, sure it's evidence that I am not sane. oh well. I'm a poet and a story-maker. who needs sanity?
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