Another technical term

I was not interested in going to work this morning, but I did. Not early.

There sat that shiny new computer, in all its Windows 7 glory.

I wandered over to the road department.  The men on mowers were gone.

I filled my water and went back to the computer.  Pushed the button. It fired up, just like that.

I tried email.  A prompt to register Microsoft programs.  But it crashed in a second, for want of an internet connection.  Oh, well, I would add that to my list for the technicians.

I tried to open a document. The same prompt, the same result.

I called tech support.  I spent the next five hours watching techs remotely shove around my cursor. Once I said, “Ed, I’m putting this phone on the desk to go to the washroom.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Ed gave up and turned it over to Gregorio.  Gregorio resolved the inability to register my programs on line. I’d have to do it by phone, then text him to start on the other problems.  Three hours!

I got that done in a New York minute and texted him, “I’m going to lunch.” He replied “Me, too, back in 30.” I replied I’d be back in an hour and went home for a leisurely apple with peanut butter and no stress.

One o’clock, back at it. I explained the missing folders that George said were on the golden transfer disc. Gregorio was not hopeful.  In fact, he bluntly said “No, they were on your old computer, which was wiped yesterday.”

But, he humored me.  I  put the disc in the drive and he sent those files whirring up and down the screen. I recognized many of them.  My old friends in the documents folder. My old friends in the accounting program.  But the lovely names I’d given the folders in my old email program did not go by.

Gregorio pressed me.  Did you save them as instructed.  Of course they were saved.  To be absolutely sure, I gave the instruction sheet to Darius.

What name did he put in the first line?

My name.

Long silence.  The penny crashed. The transfer program was not looking for me, it was looking for the auditor of state file.  And now retrievable me is irretrievable; the old computer wiped clean before I tested the new one.

“Well, “ I said to Gregorio, “shit happens.”

“Yes,” he replied, “Sheet happens. Eef you need any more help, you call me.”

Up is the only direction left.  I’ll be back, after several long days of construction, as there is nothing to reconstruct.