COLUMN: Abort, retry, fail?

From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96It's a clear case of RAMFrom Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96It's a clear case of RAMenvy. Is the appreciated butFrom Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96It's a clear case of RAMenvy. Is the appreciated butobsolete computer to blame? From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96It's a clear case of RAMenvy. Is the appreciated butobsolete computer to blame?My computer and I have been fighting a lot lately. It's a Power Mac "clone," one of the first of its type, and while the hardware seems to work, I've got all these conflicts with the software. Lately, it keeps telling me my printer isn't hooked up, which is flat-out wrong. I can see the printer; I can see the cable up its butt; what's the problem? Whenever I try to print, I get this little message saying, "Printer is not responding -- make sure it is connected and press 'OK.' " These software issues started after I installed the new Netscape Navigator, provided for free (and worth every penny) by the University's Computing Resource Center; it kept bombing and crashing my computer. Now, you'd think the natural thing would be to go back to the CRC and ask for help. But I hesitated, based on my experiences with these folks last year. They're nice enough, and I'm sure they think they're helping, but there came a point when I decided I could do just as well by taking an old department-store mannequin, taping a picture of Bill Gates's face to its head, and hooking up a tape loop that repeats the phrase, "You need more RAM." It could just be me, but I get a little miffed when somebody tells me the way to get my new $1,600 computer to work is to spend another $300, which is what RAM cost last year. So it was with some trepidation that I went back to the CRC to report that my Netscape Navigator just does not work or play well with the other software on my hard drive. Sure enough, at first came the RAM mantra, but with the qualifier that RAM prices have, since last year, plummeted faster than Pauly Shore's career. So, more RAM now seemed a viable option. Also, they told me Netscape Navigator is the software equivalent of Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son -- a bad seed that gets pouty and surly when it has to share space with other kids, but most especially when the older version of Netscape is on the drive. A clear case of sibling rivalry. Thus began a course of conduct that continues to this day. I shan't bore you with all the details (as out of character as that might seem), but the whole thing so far seems to involve a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet, sacrificing a small rodent and installing 16 new megabytes of RAM, a task only marginally less difficult than changing the spark plugs on a Revell 1/30 scale model of a Honda Civic. I seem to be running wind-sprints between my computer and the CRC, each time getting a little more of the puzzle, like a real-life version of Myst. It's kind of like Tom Wolfe's description of how a 1950s test pilot would try to fix his Lockerbie X-3.1416 as it plummeted toward the Mojave: "I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C!" Except that in my case the thing that crashes is a computer representing over 10 percent of my gross grad student salary. It'd be easy to blame the computer industry, especially the software designers. "Upgrade," in computer lingo, means "doesn't do much more, but needs more memory and a faster processor to do it." This is how they get you to buy new computers. Until last year, I was pecking merrily away on the Mac IIsi I bought in 1990, which had served me faithfully for five years. Microsoft Word 5.1 was its downfall. Here it was, happy little Mac, just chugging away -- and then along comes this word processor like the proverbial Pythonian 16-ton weight. Try to picture Kerri Strug vaulting with Jason Alexander on her back and you'll get the idea. All the other new software was the same. I had no choice but to replace it with the Power Mac clone. Here's the problem: I kept the old computer. It's still in my room. I planned to dedicate it to another use, but I haven't gotten around to that yet. So there it sits, unplugged, faintly glowering at me as I tap away on my sexy new computer with the fast processor and artificially enhanced RAM. Are you getting the picture? The old computer is jealous! It thinks I've abandoned it for some young trophy Mac. That's got to be it. Old computers don't really die when they're unplugged, not with those lithium batteries. While I'm at school, the old machine is whispering to the new one, telling it to ignore the printer, sowing seeds of discord amongst the software, until I'm left with the digital equivalent of the '68 Democratic Convention. The thing is, I'm too guilty to get rid of the old Mac. We had a lot of good years together, we had our share of laughs -- but sometimes you just grow apart. It's not anybody's fault, it just happens. But explain that to a five-year-old hunk of silicon. So I'm going to move the old computer to the storage room, beyond its radius of influence on the new machine. Maybe then I can get some peace. Pray that I make it. Otherwise, my columns from here on out are gonna look like they were written by a dyslexic Sanskrit-speaker.