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Transient Technology

Evyrling | Aug 1, 2016

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I am finally back on a keyboard!

For the past few years I have been using tablets and mobile devices exclusively and had almost forgotten the clickity clack joy of a good ol’ desktop keyboard. A wonderful man I’ll call E was moving off island with his son and gave me a few old PCs that were out of date and not working. I thought I was going to have fifty bucks for him, but money was tight and he showed up at my door with two big boxes after I emailed him to cancel. There are some amazing folks here in Hawaii, and I look forward to paying E back some day for his contributions to my growth.

The boxes contained an HP tower, Dell Optiplex, monitor, some speakers, three keyboards, a few mice, boot disks, a hard drive, and some circuit boards along with all of the power cords. So exciting! I tore open the packages like it was Christmas, already dreaming of the waves of nostalgic gaming that would soon encompass me. E mentioned that the Dell was probably the closest to functioning, possibly with an F8 restart. I didn’t remember what that was and just plugged ‘er in and started it up.

Nothing. The power light was amber and I was pretty sure it was supposed to be green so I took to google and rediscovered an old trick, the Nintendo method, if you will. I unplugged all the wires, slid the top of the box out and unlatched it’s shell. Inside, there were three small circuit boards mounted to the motherboard that I had to extract and dust off. A cd drive, hard drive and floppy drive were all in the way and I found the small latches that released them, then took them away after unplugging the small rainbow bundles of wires that would feed them power. Two small plastic hangers stretched away from each of the boards and released them. They were about half the size of an index card. I blew into the cradles and dusted the cryptic emerald boards off gently, replaced everything the way I found it and TA FREAKING DA! Green Light! Power On! Login please?…fuck.

I had reached the limit of my technological know-how. The computer was still password protected with E’s old information, which I had no interest in retaining. Also, the mouse cursor wasn’t moving on screen. I thought there would be a way to reboot the thing with the disks but unfortunately they were for a more advanced computer than this one. Still, I knew there was something…this was a working machine. Why couldn’t I use it? I considered purchasing a new copy of MS Windows but we didn’t have much money.

Then I remembered Linux. It was an “open source” operating system that was free. I found a version that I liked, went to the local library and downloaded it to a thumb drive and after a couple of trials and fails I found myself back at this glorious keyboard drolling on about my nerdtastic adventures.

Seriously though, I couldn’t help but see the parallels between installing a more open, customizable (if sometimes more confusing) operating system onto a very capable, locked up machine and this journey of becoming the woman I want to be. I am so happy to have an operating system that truly mirrors my desires and is flexible enough to allow for growth into a bright, colorful future. Thank you Linux Mint Maya, Ubuntu 14, and UALinux for their Gamepack that I am currently using! I was also able to download some old games from my childhood and am basking in Unreal Tournament and Dark Forces heaven thanks to Gog.com. Games and technology have been powerful mirrors for me during my transition and I look forward to indulging this amazing opportunity that I have been given to grow as a player, and maybe a developer too!