Kompyuter: vardaan ya abhishaap

Not to worry dearies dgrail is back. Now I can pretend that the back breaking b-school curriculam is sucking all my time but anyone whose ever been inside a b-school will vouch it’s the late night movies, back to back episodes of Heroes, eating out, bakar and ip wars that result in sleepless nights. A vocabulary consisting of words like variability, deliverables, systematic integration, competitive landscape etc can take care of the rest. 3months and am going to be out of this blessed place and this luxurious life ( I pay 18k per year for one room with attached bath in Mumbai, beat that!!)

After 2.5 years of non complaining hard work of storing 15GB songs, 0 academic material and constant winamp abuse, my computer sighed and shut itself up some time last month. On its last days the desktop had lost all the beauty of its youth when it had played host to abs revealing pictures of Brad Pitt replaced by Lord Ganesha during placement and exam seasons. It was now filled with pdfs and word docs and random wmv files. Searching something out was like treasure hunt and virtual memory low a constant flashing sign.

It seemed my life had stopped with the computer. No ipmessenger (it’s a LAN messenger), no movies, no gmail, no gtalk and shock and shudder no orkut! I was completely cut off from the only personality I have (the virtual one, duh!)

Anyways I opened the CPU box on my own (applause) for the first time in my life. Those who have been following my career graph closely should now raise an eyebrow and question the credentials of where I did my computer engineering from. I took out the RAM, pulled at the various wiring and tried other technical jugaads of the same caliber. Some other hard core techies suggested I use the tried and tested way and pound the box. I did that too but the LED didn’t glow again.

Finally I had to do it. I called in the experts. Its an amzing feeling nincompoopetancy (ha ha, dictionary main dhunde to jaane) to see a person who probably did a week long hardware training accurately identify a problem and answer the questions posed by graduate of engineering in computer science. Yes education kills your grey cells.

A week later my comp was back, its original Intel motherboard replaced by Max Intel and my pocket much-much lighter. How it was prevented from getting any lighter and why I can never call that computer guy again is another delightful episode which will make your day. Some other day though.

So there my PC was, brand new and I quickly installed the necessities like gtalk and winamp. After hours of tinkering it had updated versions of every software on earth complete with MSOffice 2007 pirated edition. (sidenote: its pretty cool vis vis 2003. MBA s will appreciate smart art and the like)

And then to finally protect it from LAN viruses on prowl I installed McAfee.

Not many of you would know the joy of formatting your computer within a week of formatting it once. Not many of would also know the joy of installing an old version of Windows and then spending hours searching for Windows service packs. Not many of would be watching songs where your audio runs ahead of the video making the actresses lip syncing skills look horrible. And not many would be typing word docs which ripple across the screen retracing their outlines. But one lucky as hell person knows how all these joys feel. If you still didn’t get it you are adding to my joy.