Wasting time with Jet

I remember when my grandfather brought our first computer home. I was probably 11 or 12...

I had wanted a Commodore 64 that I saw in a Toys R' Us sunday flyer, and mom said no.

A few weeks later, granddaddy was entering the apartment with some bags, and he called me to help him bring them in, then I saw the boxes and freaked out.

Mom hated that he spoiled us sometimes...but that's what Grandparents do!

We had that Apple 2C for as long as we could, but soon, Big Blue took over and the Mac overshadowed anything the Apple family could muster.

When grandaddy passed in '91, I learned about Computers in High School, Senor Year I learned QuickBasic and AutoCAD as I got accqainted with PC's.

Then in 1995, while working for the library, I discovered a lil known thing slowly developing called The Internet. Using the branches Dummy Terminals (Computers with no hard drive wired up in a simple network.) I hacked my way on the INTRANET using telnet servers of various college universities that would also provide website searches.

I taught myself to search the web for Video Game cheats, sound files, movie scripts and other mischief and soon became quite the web surfer/hacker.

Before my eventual termination for my antics, an eccentric elderly patron donated a simple PS/2 IBM computer to the branch in hopes to serve the public. The gift, as thoughtful as it was, went to waste as the desktop was too old to serve any use...so it was GIVEN to me.

I took it home and used to to the best of my abilities, I taught myself DOS learned Lotus 123 and WordPerfect on it, but I couldn't access the internet.

After I was fired, I somehow got my hands on my first TRUE PC, a Leading Edge D86, equipted with Windows 3.0. The leading edge was like my first bike while learining to ride. I became a wiz at Minesweeper, made pretend jounals on wordpad, used the Calendar program as a Day Planner and played LOTS of Computer Games like Prince of Persia, Zany Golf and Test Drive.

Still, I couldn't get on the internet at home.

I had to resort to going right back to where I used to work, the library. The utter humilataion of going from worker to patron...I walked blocks to a branch out of my neighborhood out of the shame of letting my former co-workers know I was canned, I signed up for half hour sessions (That went longer if no one else showed up...) and still surfed the web for Video Game cheats and other trivial stuff, ocassionaly trying to find the next job, too.

After temping for awhile, and picking up my life a bit, in 1997 I finally got a chance to expirence the internet at home...with WebTV. We had a second phone line installed, JUST for Dialup Internet access. I was in heaven. I discovered chatrooms and developed my first online persona, usagi_yojimbo, named after my favorite samurai bunny at the time. I made my first webpage and introduced my writings to the world for the first time in the form of music reviews. I was overwhelmed by the possibilities out there, meeting people, reciving offers to write profesionally as a jounalist and engaging in my first cyber-romance, but soon, it all got too much for me and I had to withdraw.

In 1999 while me and JOE were trying to conquer Wall Street, he suprised me with a charitable offering of his Compaq 1245 Laptop. With the decline of webtv, I was finally able to take computing to the next level finally joinning PC and the Internet together, I discovered music beyond my wildest dreams and started my journey into creative writing while reading online journals.

Then came my addition to eBay...

With all the drama of Family and my little niece growing up, the house became too crowded, and despite MOM kicking Psycho-Sis out to live on her own, she still baby-sat every weekend, so I had to move out on my own. In 2001, on the eve of 9/11, I had just won an eBay auction for an IBM Thinkpad. I foolishly instructed the seller to send it to my work address only to have my prize stuck in a UPS Office located in a restricted area due to the cleanup.

What I'm getting at is all the computers I had in the past we mostly Hand-Me-Downs or brought second-handedly and although I worked hard for AND with them...not since Granddaddy brought home that APPLE did I ever own a NEW computer fresh out of the box...

Until now.

I did a lot of research and found nothing wrong with a brand of PC's called ACER's

The Aspire 4000+, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor (Although I usually prefer Intel's), 512 DDR2 Memory (I know that's not much, but it doubles the 256 I've working with and it's upgradable if can buy the memory down the line...), with a 9-in-1 Memory Card Reader, 7 USB ports! and 250GB Hard Drive (SHA-BOO-WEE!!!) and of course a DVD Burner Drive, speakers and yadda, yadda, yadda...

I brought it this morning from Best Buy...they had the 4200's with 1GB DDR2 Memory and some others, but they were a bit high (Might have been worth it, but I'm no Joe Millionare!), I show the sales rep a printout of the one I wanted and he made his way to a corner and pulled a box

"That wasn't the LAST one, was it?" I asked, he said no, they just don't display this model cuz the others are faster and more expensive. I pulled out my 3 c-notes (I almost consider finding some frisky company so I had the bills on stand-by) and paid the difference by debit (which wasn't much, jus a lil more and the tax) and carried that sucker outta the store!

After saying good-bye to the old eMachines PC that I got on Craigslist 3 years ago (It's going in the living room to replace that clunker generic PC mom got from her job that Baby Girl's been playing with...), I opened up the new one and jus marveled at her...

This is what KIRK thought when he first saw the Enterprise for the 1st time...

The sleek, well-tuned machine, that will treat you right if you treat it right...

Finally, I have achived the dream that my Granddaddy started for me. He would have loved this time and age...he was always ahead of it all.

All my PC's have shared the same desination...

The Apple was "Teletran 3"
The PS/2 was "Teletran 4"
The Leading Edge was "Teletran 5"
The WebTV Modem was "Teletran 6"
The Compaq 1245 was (and still is) "Teletran 7"
The eMachines is "Teletran 8"
and my PSP is "Teletran 9"

So, on this very day, May 3rd, 2007 at 4pm...

"TELETRAN X (or Ten)" became operational and online.

For those who don't know...Teletran is the computer used by the Autobots on "Transformers" (I'm such a geek, I know...)

God help me, thou...the baby came preinstalled with Vista and there's been so many complaints I've been hearing how it's not up to par (Driver issues, etc, etc...)

Imma see how things hold up before adding any serious programs...but for now, I am at the sea of contemporaneity. (That means, I'm Cool...)