Ode to a Computer, and MORE.

Aloha, peeps.

So this is a pretty interesting time at work, namely because NBC is currently holding its pilot screenings - at which many of us get to check out and voice our opinions on the latest crop of wannabe primetime players set to hit the Peacock in the fall. As any reader of my blog knows, I am pretty opinionated when it comes to that stuff, and I love getting the chance to screen all these shows and assert my voice as an 18-34 year old white male. I mean, what I say MUST be right, demographically speaking. Right?

I've had a bunch of out-of-box type stuff I've been meaning to blog about, but haven't had the chance to as of yet. For one thing, I've been meaning to write a tribute to my Dell desktop computer -- the same computer I used for the last SIX + years, since the first day of freshman year of college. I am FINALLY putting it out to pasture, and as of last week am the proud owner of a brand new Dell, complete with fancy new Windows Vista, which I will now use alongside my trusty MacBook laptop. But let me take a trip down memory lane, if I may ...

ODE TO A COMPUTER:

The year was 2000. A year that once seemed so far away now seems so long ago -- amazing, huh? Well as I prepared to leave small town Connecticut for the bright lights and big city that is Boston, one of the things I needed, as every modern college student does, was a shiny new computer with which to write papers, illegally download music, and, um ... well let's just leave it at that. As my dad wondered if I really needed my own computer, if I couldn't just use ones at the lab, I made the case that I did need a PC to call my own, and managed to convince him to shell out the dough so that I could get all my work done from the comfort of my prison-like, barely-livable dorm room. But seriously, this Dell, purchased from the BU Computer Store, served me long and served me well. The speakers it came with turned out to be surprisingly powerful, able to blast my ever-growing mp3 collection with floor-thumping power. It seemed great, at the time, but man, many times, it really did seem to be on the brink of death.

I remember freshman year - I had set up the computer, but no sound would come out of it. Pete and Josh, our floor's resident tech experts, came in to check it out. Within minutes, the whole PC was opened up, and microchips were splayed across my bed. I was horrified. My dad would have been beside himself if he saw his latest investment taken apart so precariously. That was the first time I thought - this is it, my computer is dead. It would be the first of many.

Over the next few years, that computer traveled with me from my room in Connecticut to West Campus to Shelton Hall to South Campus and back to Connecticut. It was so freakin' big and heavy - my dad and I always dreaded the prospect of lugging it back and forth. And yet lug it we did. We lugged it all the way to New York City in the summer of 2004, to the dorms at Columbia University, where the only way to get up to the residential area was to climb three flights of steep stairs. You see, on the day I moved in to Columbia - where I was staying while interning at NBC for the summer - they had inexplicably closed the freight elevator that usually made for easy transport of one's belongings. Carrying that old Dell up those stairs made for, no kidding, one of the most unpleasant days of my entire life. Several months later, I moved to LA to begin the NBC Page Program. I had no money for a new computer, so the only option was to ship out the old battleship from Bloomfield, Connecticut. When I moved out of my temporary accomodations in Burbank to my new apartment, in late February of 2005, I once again had to find a way to haul that beast of a machine back and forth. By that point, the actual act of setting it up - once this mysterious, daunting task, had become a piece of cake and the least of my worries.

And man, like I said, there were many, many times when I thought - this is it, this thing is toast. It never helped that Dell's tech support seemingly answers any and all questions with "well, it looks like you'll have to do a system reboot." I usually managed to get around that, though at one point in college (or was it two), I actually did have to do a complete wipe. I remember desperately tracking down my friend Christine, who was an early adopter in the mp3-player game, asking to borrow her player so that I could copy my treasured music collection to it before I performed a digital lobotomy. I didn't realize just how big my collection was though, and realized that in order to transfer all my songs, I'd have to delete all of hers! I think Christine is still upset about that one! Haha, oh man. For whatever reason though, whenever my PC was on life support, I was like a man possessed trying to get it back up and running. I guess because, at a huge city school like BU, if you're not connected, you're totally out of the loop. AOL Instant Messenger was like your whole gateway to the outside world. And during that time, the BU network was our source for movies, music ... Luckily, Facebook didn't come around until senior year ...

Honestly, I can't even believe that that PC lasted this long. It really did go to the brink numerous times, only to miraculously brought back, like some crazy old man that just keeps on kicking after taking a licking. Finally, as of a few months ago, it got to the point where whenever more than one program was open at a time (say, Internet Explorer and Word), I'd get a pop-up message saying Insufficient Memory, and I'd be forced to quit the programs or else reboot. With the desktop running slow and being a constant source of annoyance, and some recently received tax break dollars in my grasp, I knew that the time had finally come -- the computer had to go.

When I broke the news to former roommates Chris and Aksel, their reaction, like mine, was one of amusement mixed with sadness. Like me, they had come to grow fond of that old, beat up computer. Many a times did we rock out to music emanating from it's speakers. Many a time did we gather round its bulky monitor to watch a funny video or a missed episode of 24. Many a time did Chris, realizing that I was away at class, sit down at my desk and proceed to use my computer to ... no, won't go into that, this is a family blog. When I told Chris that the ol' box was gettin' the boot, he reacted in the only way he could. 'You can't get rid of it - it's a classic!" In a way, he was right. But at the same time, I had heard the call of progress and decided it was finally time to answer.

So now, the old beast sits in my closet, taking up way too much space with its ridiculous bulk, awaiting the day when it will be plugged in one final time so that the hard drive can get zapped clean. On my desk sits a new model. It's sleeker, smaller, it doesn't hum and vibrate like it's haunted by a poltergeist when I turn it on. The monitor is flat, the keyboard clicks in a satisfying manner when I press the keys, and the mouse doesn't have to be unplugged and plugged back in every 5 minutes in order to work. But in my own way, I have chosen to honor the old guard. I transferred all my documents and songs of course - the songs especially took a while, but my famed digital music collection remainss intact, obscure TV theme songs and all, and ready to rock out to at a moment's notice. And my Winamp skin remains the same, for old time's sake. And yes, while the new Dell is a sleek black and silver, my old tan-grey speakers remain alongside the new system, kickin' out the tunes same as always.

But here's to the old-school computer. It was there through the good times and the bad, in four states and two coasts, two college campuses, several roommates, and endured enough viruses, spam, and error messages to level the Terminator. If nothing else, it was a survivor.

TV STUFF:

- THE OFFICE - hilarious, once again. I'd say that this ep was up there in terms of being very funny and endlessly quotable, but a few subplots fell a bit flat, mostly the revelation that Andy had somehow been dating a high school girl? Hmmm ... Still, Jim and Andy made for a great comedic duo, and Michael Scott's apology video, capped by the total non-sequitar "You have one day." was classic. Sure, there were rough patches, but overall, another example of why this is, bar none, the best comedy on TV right now ...

My Grade: A -

- 30 ROCK, again, faltered a bit by laying on the soapy subplots at the expense of the random humor that originally made this show so funny. Alec Baldwin's character has been oddly normalized of late. They're trying to make him more of a regular guy, down to earth, relatable - but I think it's backfiring, and in the end just making him boring. I'm all for developing the characters on the show, but this show isn't at its best when its attempting to be a relationship comedy in the vein of Friends. And please ... don't even imply that there is romantic tension between Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey (which they did a lot of last night) - it totally throws off the great dynamic that the show originally had between the two, and feels VERY forced. Otherwise, this was funny stuff - Tracy Morgan and Kenneth the Page consistently crack me up, and the show's writing, when it's on its game, continues to be sharp and funny.

My Grade: B

Alright, I'm out - HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND.