NEW STUFF

This is what my husband calls a laundry list. I'm tabulating what I've learned since January when I had a dial up modem. When it took 13 hours to update Norton Virus from 08 to 09; took 9 hours to download just the trial version of Word Perfect Office X 4.

Mid January, everything changed. Our son JD had been nagging me, gently, for more than a year. "You've got to get DSL. You're behind the times, Mom. You can research, you can download anything, everything in just a couple of minutes -- you can't really use the internet, Mom, if you don't upgrade your tools."

Okay. I upgraded. Didn't really feel it was necessary or essential, but when you son says you're behind the times, you pay attention!

Instantly, all my office chores, all the things I did on a daily basis were topsy-turvy unfamiliar.

My ability to download fast got me a fantastic new browser. Puzzling over it, struggling to create a consistent view for all the new things -- whiz bang -- I learned to transfer addresses, forward, open, close, various accounts, while big stuff was going on. We (web designer Fran, JD and I) were building me TheReadery and Em's Talkery, a blog -- html, URL stuff, tabs, bookmarks, with dial-up modem me, mile-a-minute signing in and out of seven -- yes, seven e-mail addresses with a passel of passwords.

Meanwhile, JC had bought a Mac. Big Musical Numbers, choreography, major leading roles JC learns and performs letter perfectly. JC fixes electrical circuits, toilets, sinks, drains, leaks, tiles, locks, pilot lights on the stove, the thermocouple on the furnace. A computer turns him into a dunce. So I, who am a natural computer person, while racing around doing all the other stuff, had to learn the basics on the Mac in order to help JC.

Same time, installing a router, more gigs of Mem on my Dell, fussing with 17 phone extensions -- crawling under desks, tables, behind steel cabinets, book shelves investigating jacks in corners that haven't been vacuumed for fifteen years.

Also trekking into the courtyard at the rear of our building, helping tech guys figure where our ancient wires came in, why we had static, trying to get rid of call-waiting, (I hate call-waiting), while I'm learning to write, edit, post a blog, how to find an IP address, make a link, clear my cache, install stats, gadgets, images, scan and crop jpg files.

Now that I'm 5 months old on the internet, I'm counting on being faster, smarter, more educated, shrewder when I hit 8 months, and brilliant when I'm one-year- old.

Yes, I'm bragging. I really have learned a lot. My head is fat with new routines, and I'm contemplating, yes, looking ahead -- learning about 64 bits versus 32, and quad processors for a new NEW computer, which means ... Holy Moley Minorka, installing all this tricky, bedeviling, intricate, confusing, somewhat unstable up-to-date stuff all over again! But yay hurray -- JD was right -- it's a whole new world, and I've joined it.