Geekdom For The Old And Infirm

In this blog I am not obliged to assume any voice but my own. My own is a rather opinionated older woman who came to techdom as well as writing later in life.
My first computer (I shudder at the memory) was purchased by me shortly after my husband's death. I actually used a 28.8 modem and had aol (hides from the screams that are sure to come from the purists who remember what aol was), but not right off the bat, and certainly not in that order because you see, I had no idea you needed an isp to connect to the internet or that a modem was in turn used to connect to said isp and hence to the mysterious but mightily desirable internet.
I was determined to master this beast, and it was delivered to my house and set up on a brand new computer desk fresh as a daisy, a plastic enclosed daisy. I followed the instructions faithfully, inserting cord A into slot B on piece C.
I stood back and surveyed this wonder of modern technology and was inordinately proud of myself. However there remained some questions that the beginner's book on windows and the compaq (yes I cringe to say I owned one even way back when) computer manual did not answer.
For instance:
Do I leave the plastic on the mouse to protect it from dust? I heard that mice wore out? Or was that meeces or something even more disturbing?
Seriously. I had to figure out where the ON button was the book did not seem to say. I mean. there was an on off button on the monitor but that did not make anything happen.
Those books really should include a section for the clueless on WHERE to turn the computer on at.
I had my computer on though after some trial and error, mostly error I admit.
Great! Now I was ready to connect to the internet.
Now. please forgive me or at least don't spit your coke out at your screen when I tell you that to me the internet was a wonder that must surely come packaged with a computer, after all the t.v. advertisements said "internet ready" and here I am with an internet ready computer all plugged in and no internet. I was not prepared for the complexities of plugging in a modem to a phone jack.
I did eventually find those instructions.
Fine...the phone jack was in the modem which was in the mysterious back of my new computer but WHERE was the internet?
I played happily on my new toy for a while, it came with some pool game or other, and pondered this question while browsing the help files in windows 95.
I also had finally unwrapped the mouse from it's plastic packaging when it failed to respond no matter what I did while it was wrapped (I swear to you the book did not cover that). It was some days before I removed the plastic from the monitor screen though.
It took a house call from the technician at our local computer shop to teach me to actually shut down windows properly and not to unplug it or push the power button he also said the mysterious words "modem" and internet connection and even asked me "Who is your service provider".
Oh yes and during this several weeks learning period i reinstalled windows via the restore cd some four times much to the technician's amusement.
I am so happy that it never occurred to me to call the toll free help number included with windows and with the computer. I would have been some tech's nightmare call of the month.
Those were the early days. What I discovered in the process of learning was a dogged persistence in myself that I wasn't aware I possessed. I refused to give up on a problem until I found the answer. It was like a mission and I could not seem to stop.
The computer became a hated and beloved friend of sorts in those early and lonely days after my husband's death.
Learning about it and how it worked was accomplished first, by reading the manuals that came with the computer, then going to our local computer shop and asking incredibly stupid questions. Then, finally when I found that to connect to the internet, an isp was required, I used online search engines.
As I said even the old and infirm can come to a sort of geekdom albeit somewhat limited.
It's now 12 years later. My hard drive blew last week and I managed to get the old one cloned onto a new and much bigger drive, upgrade my memory from 2 gigabytes to 3 and install a new nvidia video card that was long overdue and could handle a dual monitor system.
Yes, I did that. I purchased and installed the hardware myself. Sometimes I really do surprise myself.
I am actually using this somewhat lengthy post as a lead-in to an article I recently wrote on a wi-fi antenna. I not only wrote this article but built the antenna myself and am currently using it.