Of Karaoke and New Computers

I hate change. Even good changes are upsetting for me. I like my life to remain nicely stable and for changes to occur only when I decide they should. For some reason, this is not a realistic expectation.
I’ve introduced one change recently, and had another thrust upon me, all in the last two weeks.
When my husband and I were dating, we were both fairly broke, so dates including expensive activities were out. However, he liked to sing karaoke and was good at it. We had a little round of clubs where we went every week, so he could sing and I could watch. I love to sing, but until the past couple of years, never felt I had an acceptable voice. The folks at my church have prevailed on me to sing in the choir, but being in front of that many people makes me nervous. However, they’ve been telling me over and over, that I can, in fact, sing. My sister is a true songbird, and I’ve always felt eclipsed by her talent, which may well explain why I’ve always felt handicapped when it comes to singing.
In any case, hubby and I started going to karaoke again, after an absence of several years. This time, I’ve been singing now and again. It’s a strange feeling, and one that I’m still not comfortable with. I can sing in the shower, in the car and at home or church, with little, if any, feelings of self-consciousness. Get me on a stage, and I’m nervous and sweaty-palmed. But the applause is addictive, I have to say. So, I’m making a personal change. I’m trying my own songbird wings, just to see if I can.
The other change happened last Friday morning. I came into work to see my old faithful computer, on my desk since May, 1998, running a "surface scan," apparently of its own volition. I get scared when my computers start doing things on their own. It’s usually not good.
This wasn’t good. The scan showed several bad data clusters on the hard disk and a helpful note that said something like, "The damage may be due to an outside influence such as a power outage, but most likely indicates imminent hardware failure. Back up your files." Or, in other words, "It’s a twister! Auntie Em! Auntie Em!" So, I went yelling to our systems tech, who looked over the situation, restarted my machine several times, and said, "I’m creating a folder for you on the mainframe server. Put everything you want to keep in there. I’m ordering you a new machine this morning. It should be here first of the week."
What? A new computer? This company doesn’t buy "new" anything. We fix it until it disintegrates. But apparently, my computer was so old, no one still made replacement parts for it. Of course, I’ve had "replacements" done before. The old machine was running on its second hard drive, third motherboard, third monitor and fourth keyboard in seven years. I’m tough on keyboards.
The new machine arrived Monday morning and it was on my desk that afternoon, Windows XP installed and running, and all my goodies from the mainframe server installed and in their proper folders. I’ve been tinkering with it all week, getting it to where it does things the way I like them done.
But I have to gripe about XP for just a minute. Were the graphics in this O/S designed by the good folks at Pixar??? I’ve never seen anything so cartoonish in my life! The toolbar graphics in IE are laughable. Why not have "kids graphics" that can be installed and have sensible icons for the rest of us? That’s another thing. The XP appearance scheme is hard on my eyes. A gray background is much easier to read. That cream background is a royal pain and gives me a headache. Listen up, Mr. Gates!! I’ve changed everything to the Windows Classic appearance and I’m much happier. Ditto for the Start Menu.
The positive change is the very speedy 2.66 gHz Pentium 4 processor. There are certainly faster ones available, but people, my old machine had 64 MB of RAM and the processor ran at about 256 mHz. This new machine is like riding with Jeff Gordon at Talladega after being on a mule for seven years! I had forgotten computers were so fast. I’ve finally got a machine that can keep up with the T3 line for the Internet!
Change may be good, and this week, it has been good. But I still don’t like it, as a rule. Still, for the next couple of weeks, I’ll have new things to focus on: choosing karaoke songs in my range and tinkering with a new computer. Ah, life’s rich pageant. Welcome to my world — isn’t it exciting? Yeah, I knew it wasn't. Oh well.