Back in the Saddle Again

I have a bit of a headache, so I don't know how long this will be. I have a laptop again, so some part of my life is restored, which is nice. I almost feel a little tentative about the whole thing because I sort of got used to leaving work and coming back to a machine-free existence; to not being able to check email, blog, or just browse. And the Apple, while a wonderful creature, is a little intimidating. It's so white, so complete, so untouchable in its own way. I don't know any of the shortcuts, or how to move with facility in this particular interface. It's another adjustment in itself. When it arrived at work, I was so thrilled that I clutched the little case and kissed it, much to the amusement of the mailroom guy.

Last night, however, was another story. Since my old laptop is dead, there was no way in which to transfer all my music from one hard drive to another. Turns out that despite all its other wonderful features, apple doesn't enable you to transfer music onto your computer from an ipod. Oh the horror! I think I actually sputtered on the phone when Christian from tech support said, "Adithi, I'm afraid we're not allowed to do that." Still, he was nice enough to suggest that I google a third-party server to try and find another program that would trick the laptop into importing music from Humbert (my ipod). I hope it didn't cost him his job.

After three hours of building frustration - I kicked the wall and jogged in place to cool off - I finally managed to successfully use this cunning program "Senuti" ("itunes" in reverse, a real killer) and got all my music onto the laptop. By the time it was done, I felt like freaking Rocky. I mean, computers are really hard to deal with; as "user-friendly" as they can be, they operate with their own language and logic, and it takes a major effort to break through the translation barriers.

This isn't turning out to be the cheerful and thrilling post I intended. Oh well, I'm going to have tea and turn in. I tried to make conversation downstairs at dinner tonight, but felt sort of overwhelmed by the extraordinarily male company. There's only so much about "flying boobs" that I can tolerate. Even if I was the one who opened the discussion.