Crash Course

When a computer dies, you either learn fast or cry uncle

THE OTHER DAY my computer "crashed."

By crashed, I don't mean it was because I pulled some bonehead stunt like winding the computer wire around my leg and it "crashed" on the floor when I wandered away. That would have been the case if I had said I crashed something 10 years ago, but nowadays people know it means your computer stopped for some unexplainable reason. The screen went blank, and banging on the keyboard didn't help.

I had to call in someone.

(I must digress here. I don't have a clue how or why computers work. All I know is that I can type a column like this one on the computer's screen and when it is finished, I go on "the Net" and, through pure magic, I send my words to The Seattle Times. (That's about the extent of my knowledge of computers. So when I get in trouble I have to rely on relatives and paid strangers to bail me out. I sometimes even have to resort to the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston. Mrs. Johnston will help, but she gives me a stern lecture on learning about the computer. I try to explain that my brain will only hold so much information, and for me to stuff in information about computers means some other memory will have to be kicked out. Let's say I have to kick out your birthday in order to remember how to reboot the computer, I tell her. How'd you like them apples?

(I don't think it's an age issue. Some of my friends who are in their 50s can whiz around on a computer like teenagers. Even Bill Gates is closer to my age than to my children's. It's just that computers never caught my interest. I am through digressing now, and will get back to the column.)

One of my children happened to wander by while I was fighting with the computer, and I asked him for help. In all the years I spent with my father, I can't remember he ever asked me to help fix anything. The man knew how to rewire a house, tune up a car, put in a toilet — he was one of those World War II vets who could do most anything. But desperate times call for desperate measures. So when I asked my kid to take a look at the computer, he sat down with a big sigh, typed away at the keyboard and moved the mouse around. Then he said something like "Wow! You fried your main drive. How old is this computer?"

I said it was two, three years old. Tops. "That's old," he said. "Time to get a new hard drive."

I wanted to say that something only two or three years old is not old, but I knew better. The reason Bill Gates and the rest of the computer bunch are so rich is because we have to replace their products every 600 days or so. Any other product that wears out in a couple years would be run out of town.

But resigned to my fate, I opened the Yellow Pages, looked up "Computer Repair" and found an ad for a company I thought I could deal with. When I talked to the company (by the way, they don't speak English at these places; they speak "Computereze"), it was apparent I needed a new hard drive. I don't know what that is, but it cost a lot of money.

I asked the guy selling the hard drive how to install it, and he spoke more Computereze to me. After my eyeballs unrolled, he recommended another guy to come to my house and install it. You cannot just plug in one of these babies and start typing. That would be too easy.

So after a lot of phone calls, I was ready for some genius to hook me up. Some kid in a T-shirt showed up, flipped the computer box around, plugged in wires, typed in a bunch of stuff, announced he was done and left.

I should have tried it out while he was still in my sight because I couldn't even get the screen to come on, much less type in anything. I called the computer guy. He asked me a bunch of questions I couldn't answer, then finally said he would come out. After he monkeyed around some more, the machine was up and running.

Now I'm going to try to have it talk to The Seattle Times. If you are reading this, it either made it through or I delivered it by hand.

Steve Johnston is a retired Seattle Times reporter. His e-mail address is stevejonst@aol.com. Paul Schmid is a Seattle Times news artist.