Get Your Own

...computer, that is. Because, my laptop is broken. Hard drive-toasted. Data-recovered by masterful DH with Ubuntu. So, here I am, at the slow, crappy, prone to multiple errors and random crashes old desktop.

This computer is now usually the purview of DD, who is allowed to play computer games from a website on here. She is not even three, but has gotten quite good at navigating through that website and finding the games she wants to play, and using the mouse to work through the "levels" of these preschool games. It's quite impressive really. However, it does become a trifle annoying when I'm checking my email and DD comes in and quite insistently says she needs to play her games and it's HER computer.

Of course it's even more annoying that we have encouraged her to feel a sense of ownership in this system, because it keeps her away from our laptops. So I can hardly scold her for a feeling I've encouraged, and she certainly feels that I'm poaching when I use this computer here.

So I have been relegated to using the computer surreptitiously (for the most part), to avoid constant demands for the Elmo games and indignant looks that I find amusing as well as annoying. And, it seems, DH likes to use this system for checking Facebook and other minutiae that he doesn't feel merit hauling out his work laptop, so I have come in to find all my windows closed and Facebook open. Grrrr.

I've admitted it freely before, but I really don't like sharing a computer with my DH. We do things differently, and have different opinions about operating systems and programs, etc. Whereas DH will jump on new software and platforms to play with them, I will be torn shrieking away from my older programs and OS begrudgingly accept changes to my system, often with an irascible shrieking and complaint that caused arguments in the early years of our marriage. Now DH knows better and just leaves my computer alone except for important safety updates, because every time he changes something (however small) on my system it provokes an argument and heated discussion about the necessity for the new thing.

So here I am, back to sharing a computer with DH and now DD. I don't like it. I want my laptop back NOW, TYVM, and I'm already ticked about the ridiculousness of a warranty process that requires me to send my whole laptop away when DH (a certified technician and about twelve technical competency levels above the yahoo who will end up servicing my computer) already knows it is a bad drive and just needs a new hard drive installed. Like THAT requires me to send my computer away for days, perhaps weeks, when I know DH could do it in about twenty minutes! Pfff!!! *grouse* Stupid computers...