The Power of Love

Ok, I know, the title is a stretch.  A big, big stretch. But you try finding songs about computers and more specifically computer storage.

Honestly it was a toss up between Power of Love, and Memories from Cats. And honestly, although I think the Cats one was probably more fitting, but I just couldn't do it. (Sorry aunt Vickie, I just really, really dislike that show.)

So, you know.  Power.  Computers.  They kinda go together. Right?

Anyway...

Once upon a time when I was young and skinny and single and in college, I had computer issues.

 My dad had given me an old computer to take to college and had actually upgraded it so it was a 286 or a 486 or something, with like 40 megs of hard drive space, and I was using WordPerfect and that was fine, it worked for me, until I decided I needed to add Microsoft Word to it because I didn't have a printer, and the school's computer lab only used Word, and naturally those programs were incompatible.

So...

I enlisted the help of Bob, an older guy who worked with me at Media Play (in the computer department with John) and he came over to my apartment one day to help me install it. 

Side story- Bob used to work for the government, and he was kinda crotchety and didn't like most of the cashiers except me.  He thought they were all incompetent idiots.  I thought he was hilarious, one time he came up to my register and looked at the giant Coke display, and made a comment something like this "You know Coke has done a real snow job with those polar bears.  They aren't all cute and cuddly.  Those things would rip your head off as soon as look at you.  Don't ask me how I know this, something to do with the Russians.  If I told you, I'd have to kill you."  And then he just walked off.  But the thing was, I knew he'd meant every word of it.

Anyway, Bob came over with a NFR copy of Word (not for resale - Like a demo copy for the store, but since the store didn't have use for it...) and tried to install it on my computer, except apparently 40 megs of hard drive space is next to nothing.  Just to install it, he had to strip the program down to nothing so that all I could do was type and save to a floppy disk.

John heard about the pathetic-ness of my computer and jumped in to help (I can't remember if we had started dating yet, or were still "just friends")  He managed to procure me a hard drive with a whole gigabyte of space on it for only $50.  (it was worth at least $500 back in the day) (Wow, isn't it good to have friends with connections?)

Of course I was like "A Gig?!?!  When am I EVER going to need a GIG?!?!?"   I thought it was total over-kill.  I was totally dumbfounded and one might say I pitched a bit of a fit. (Cause that amount of space was crazy!)  But at that price, it was a heck of a lot cheaper than something half the size so I went with it.

Fast forward to now. 

I'm having storage issues.  Once again my hard drive isn't big enough. 

See that big red line?  It's not supposed to be red.  It's telling me I am quickly running out of space on my laptop.  I only have 12 gigabytes of space left.  I'm seriously in crisis mode over here.   I think most of it might be pictures,  and I suppose I could save the older stuff to disks somewhere, or better yet send them to Costco to be printed AND save them to disks, but I like the convenience of being able to go back and find an old picture that fits my story (see the above picture of me) and add that to my ramblings.

Good thing I know a guy... Unfortunately I think it will cost more than $50.

~~~~~~


"The power of love is a curious thing.  Make a one man weep, make another man sing" - Huey Lewis and the News