It Is Dead

In the midst of my day on Friday, I went to sit down in my office for a working lunch. I was planning on re-doing my schedule for next week because I forgot that Friday was a Holiday a I needed to give a few employees that day off accordingly. I grabbed my sandwich from ABP (grilled chicken and mozzarella with tomato) and my water and pull up the schedule on my computer.

Now, my computer is so old it runs Windows 95. It makes odd animal noises when I turn it on in the morning, and incessantly clicks and growls. I am serious when I say that it takes a good 5-10 minutes to load a web page or an Adobe page. It is crazy and I have been complaining about how old and crappy my work computer is since I started at my new store. I was used to my old store where every manager had at least one new computer, but for nine months I didn't make a big deal out of it because all of the files, templates, and other things I needed were on the old computer, and because it didn't have a USB port or a CD ROM drive it was hard to get the files off of it.

Anyway, back to my story, I sat down with my lunch to do my schedule, and about 10 minutes into working on the schedule my computer unexpectedly shuts down with a weird buzzing noise and a puff of smoke. I was taken aback by this noise and the fact that my computer actually smoked. I was confused and not sure what to do so I stared at it for a few minutes before I tried to turn the computer back on. It didn't turn back on so i turned it around to see if the plug was loose, then i crawled under my desk to see if the surge protector was plugged in. All seemed to be in order, so I tried to turn the computer back on, at this point I have a really bad feeling, and as expected the computer does nothing.

I call my boss who is much better with the technology thing then I am, and he takes a look at it and literally calls the time of death at 3:04pm. There was no hope it looks like it overheated and considering it was 12 year old it was time for it to go. In my head I did a little happy dance, but then I was also slightly distraught, i had so many things on that computer that I needed. How would it be possible to live without my schedule template? How can i do payroll without my adder-upper? This was a major problem, but i was also happy at the thought getting a new computer, and not having to deal with an old piece of crap.

Ah, but my dreams of a new shiny computer were dashed when my boss told me to take the extra computer from M's office and hook it up. It wouldn't have all of the same stuff as I had on mine but it should work. I does work, and it does run on Windows XP so it is much nicer than what I had. It is a step up so I can't really complain! Now, I just need to recreate all of my work. I guess RUSH was ushered in by exploding soda cans and ushered out by a smoking computer. Just a few weeks in the life of managing a bookstore!