h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi folks. Things are not going well over here. My sister and her family were here for a visit but instead of a nice visit it was a load of struggling for nothing. I wish they just came and spoke with me and listened to music and watched a movie or two or something like that. Instead they tried to help me fix my computer problems. You guys know that I've had monitor trouble. Now you'll also know I need a good monitor for allowing me to scan in my paintings and sketches so I can share them here. So anyways, some of you said that maybe I only need a new cable and as far as I know, that might be quite right. But anyways my brother in law insisted that I needed a new computer. So we went and bought a new computer. Was a big hassle getting it up here and connected and ... just getting my email to work again. So I now at least have email and internet. But ... I'm lost. This is a strange computer and as good as being lost in a strange and hostile world. Everything is different now. I managed to get signed in back here, and in that social network site ... but I was involved in many other websites as well. I have to find them all again and register all over again. I've lost my favourites and my internet history that I used to navigate to the various sites I regularly visited. It feels like a massive number of 'beacons' that I've lost. I don't know if you'll understand but to me it's a big deal. Being paranoid schizophrenic everything seems hostile, and every little thing that I'm familiar with and feel safe with is a little thing that helps to keep me sane . So I've lost a lot of that. I've lost all the programs I had on the old computer. So ... after spending all that money I *still* cannot scan in my paintings because I don't have a scanner driver and my nice program that I used to edit the stuff I scanned in with. That stuff must be in the house somewhere, the disks and stuff I got when we bought the scanner, but I don't know where so it's now a quest just to get them again. So I have a theoretically great computer but I don't have the ability to make it work for me. The old computer may be old and obsolete but I was able to make it work! I could do what I needed to. I had learnt how to use it to do the stuff I do over the course of years, and I lost all of that!

I just needed a working screen!

Anyways ... to anybody else it might seem trivial to get going and learn how to use a new computer. But I'm running ragged right now ... my mind has been hanging by a thin thread for the past three weeks that's been getting more and more frayed. I honestly can't see my way forward now. The expense and trouble has already been much too much. I can't justify this. I don't have this kind of money! I don't really have the time and energy for any of this. What the hell do I do? Do I hire a computer guy now anyways to come and help me out? Still having the same problem with letting a stranger into my house and working with my personal stuff? Well it's less personal now than it was but still. What the hell is all this for? It's only for the sake of my work, and perhaps three or four people in the entire world give a damn about that. I'm sick to my stomach, I am in physical pain right now. I can't ask anyone to help me because I can't explain to anyone why I'm not OK. I'm not OK, I'm not OK, I'm not OK ... listen folks, this was fun while it lasted but I don't know how much longer I can hold on. My silly little computer was a vital pillar of support for me. I can't explain to people how pathetic that is. This is inhuman, you can't expect a person to eviscerate himself in front of another human being over a computer. I'm not going to be able to ask for help. And without help I'm going to be unable to work and without being able to work I'm going to be unable to justify my existence and without being able to justify my existence I'm not going to be able to exist.

Can you hook the new monitor to the old computer, or is that one not there anymore? If you could do that, then you could switch the monitor over when you want to use the now one. Or upload to an online harddrive from your old computer, and download to your new. That's something someone on here could walk you through, and you wouldn't have to have anyone in your house. I could go and try try to fetch HappyDude for you, if you're not in touch via email--I seem to remember that you know him, and he's played tech support for me in the past.

For that matter, if you still have the old computer, I think there's a way you can connect both computers together and transfer stuff that way. That would likely be faster and wouldn't eat into your bandwidth. Definitely have to find someone other than me to help with that, though.

Actually, I think I put a thread into Ask about that a couple years ago. I'll go see if I can find it.

Amy, please don't bother. I am a very ill person right now, I can barely see out of my eyes. I will probably not be able to interpret anything you or anyone else could tell me. I guess it's my fault for having tried to seem normal and all right. My mind has been liquified by a sudden insight of just how pathetic I am. I don't think it is something I could recover from.

I did already find the thread, but it wouldn't be much help anyway.

Hey, Willem - I know the feeling. New computers are a pain.

If you can hook your new monitor to the old computer, you can copy stuff off the old computer onto a CD or portable harddrive, and reload it on the new computer.

And if you don't have a stick, you can buy one - they only cost a few dollars, really. I'm a computer wuss, and I've done it.

Hang in there. Take it one step at a time. It will work.

And we've got computer geniuses on here, they'll help.

Tell us what you need, and somebody will find it.

Hi folks, thanks for the messages. This is not about a new computer as such. It is about the realisation that my life depends so much on something so fragile as a usable computer. But on it I have my art, my writings and so on ... which *is* my life, basically. I don't have friends, my closest family live far away and don't understand me. The only thing I live for except my cat, is for being able to share art and writing with the world. But I can't really share this very widely. I am just overall too handicapped. And people can't see or understand this, so no-one can really help me. Crippled in my ability to interact with the outer world, my loneliness and sense of alienation worsens and right now it is very bad. It's wonderful that you folks over there offer me help ... but you're all in truth far, far, far away from me. I don't have anyone *here* to just sit with me and along with me look at this computer and all the stuff it might be able to do and help me work new ways out of doing what I need to do. Last time we got new computers, it was always me and my father and we would go over everything and try the different things together, and it was fun together to explore a new machine and its software, and if I figured out something cool I could just call my dad and show it to him and/or to my mom. Now I'm sitting here in front of this extremely big, sleek, shiny and flashy computer - alone. If it's a great machine, I've no one to share it with, and if I have trouble with it, I have no one together with which I can puzzle things out.

I am so, so, so starved of real human companionship. A new computer ... it's perhaps not bad to have ... but more, more than anything I just wanted my sister and her family to visit me and interact with me in a nice way just as flesh and blood people without any shiny flashy expensive stuff. Or anyone. I want someone to listen with me to this song I'm listening to right now. I want someone to watch a movie with me. I want someone to just talk to. Even though I know that 99% of what I really want to say, I could never say. But the 1% would still count for something, if it was even there.

what song are you listening too?

shit, I think my heart just broke a bit when I read of your loneliness

The question what song are you listening to seems inane on its own. I asked for the song so that I could listen too, I am online so here in real time, our friendship is real

I know and understand completely, the need for actual relationships in life and as I said it made me ache to read that post. I can't do actual.

And I am not offering a fix for that because I can't do that either

I just wanted to be as real, and to feel as close to you as I could be possibly be in this moment of time, listening to same song was part of that

erm, does that make any sense

oh, I am very sorry for the swear,if it has caused any offense, it was what I thought word for word for but that one wasn't supposed to slip into my writing on this thread

I did preview but I was concentrating on how I was expressing myself in the second halfish of the post that I didn't re-read the begining of it

I don't think anybody minded, Peanut.

You two - you and Willem - make me proud to know you, with your honesty and willingness to reach out to each other.

Willem, buddy, hang in there. I know exactly how you feel. Sometimes, missing someone can sneak up on you and punch you in the gut. The seasons will change, and all of a sudden, you'll remember...and it hurts, it's a physical pain.

I'm sorry it's like that. But cut yourself some slack, take it a step at a time, and talk to your friends here. We know we can't make up for the silence over there, or the worry. But what we can do, we will do. We hate it that all we have are words and advice, we don't mean to be preachy...

In other words, what Peanut said. Oh, phoo, I'm feeling like she did - we don't have enough smileys for this. And why can't we turn out computers into holoprojectors and send a real-time hug?

Dmitri, it is an honour to know you

so much so that I felt a bit choked up when I read that you proud to know us

I did not on this occasion swear though, even in my head

I believe you, .

My Dear Willem,

I know we are far away but please do not think that we do not understand. I have a friend who is almost exactly like you, dependent on his computer for so many things, and lacking in friends, and tahe courage to go out and meet people.

For us it is agony to watch, and so very difficult to help him, and I feel the same about you.

I do know how you feel about this new computer - new technology terrifies me but if you can just get over that initial panic and try one step at a time I think you might find it is not as terrifying as it first seems.

<<>>>

Willem, that statement is not true. There are many people here who really appreciate both your art and your writing, and I am sure there are many who see and read but don't comment.

I wish I could wave a magic wand and make things right for you but I can't but I hope you will accept our comments and that it will give you some hope and courage to carry on and maybe ask for help.

It is sad that your family didn't give you the companionship you really wanted, but it seems people with jobs and children these days have little time for the less fortunate, and that is not a criticism of your family, just an observation of yours, and mine too.

Big and hang in there. If you can the panic might subside and you will find a way round this. You are so very clever I think you will.

Websailor

Thanks Websailor of course I know who you mean! Give him my best wishes please.

Argh... I had just written and tried posting a long reply and the computer ate it. Because I haven't yet figured out the version of Word this computer has, I can't yet write in Word and copy and paste here as I usually do with long postings. Let's try again. Peanut, no worries about language here! As for the song, it's 'The Last Page' by Russian Gothic metal band Dark Princess. You'll probably not like it. Funny thing is my brother-inl-law probably would have liked it, had they stayed. My sister also likes much of the same kind of music I do. One of the things in life I most want to do is to enjoy music, art and other things like that with people who have similar tastes to mine. My tastes ... I like a wide variety of different sorts of things, I can usually find something to appreciate in almost anything.

My sister and her husband are insanely overworked. Their schedules are inhuman and I wonder if they are not 'inhumanized' to a degree because of that.

They almost always see me at my worst. In shops, noisy restaurants, outside of my known and trusted environment, suffering from stress and sensory overload. I wish they can just at some times see me doing *well*, doing something I can do well so they can see I do know a thing or two also. I feel very inferior to them. My sister is a doctor and my brother-in-law an engineer and manager in the dairy industry. They get lots of money but little time for each other, for their son, and for me. I don't think they have close friends either. But with their busy work lives they're probably OK with that.

Peanut, thanks for wanting to seem closer to me ... the thing is, this is not anything like face-to-face in-the-flesh interaction. Me, I'm usually multitasking while online, posting something every now and then, in between doing other things, and every now and then I've had enough and have to switch off the computer and do something different for several hours. I might write a reply rapidly or very slowly but you folks only see the end result. I'm very freaked out by real-time chatting. I'd rather not make it less artificial than it is. At the moment this computer weirds me out ... because everything looks different it seems as if all my friends had changed. But I still appreciate this interaction for what it is worth.

In person I'm actually friendly and outgoing. But because I don't live the kind of life most people do, I can't speak with them much about the subjects they usually do. And I have a really hard time handling racism, bigotry and negativity. I am diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic because my mind tends to run away with negative worries and speculations. I have to try and stay away from that. But *many* people here tend towards negativity. Even when it is realistic I have to stay away from it. I need a little bit of denial about how bad things are to be able to go forward and face each new day. But this too makes it hard for me to speak with most people.

Dmitri, I was very close with my mom and dad especially in our final years together. We were all intelligent and sensitive and formed a mutual bulwark against a world that was for all of us quite hostile. We did not have many outside friends. Actually there are some ... they are friends of mine still, but they too are not regular visitors, we see each other very infrequently. That, too, is better than nothing.

Today I did not manage to do much with the computer ... tried getting the scanner to work but failed ... but managed to dig out a disk with drivers for it, will try again tomorrow. If that works, I'll try to scan in a sketch and link it here ... sigh, I'll have to get back my Photobucket account as well.

Let me just try posting this.

It worked

Yep, it did. Thanks for letting us know how it's going.

One step at a time, one day at a time Willem, you have already made progress. thanks for the message. I will pass it on. He sent his best wishes to you too.

Websailor

Hi folks! Things are going a bit better now. Some of you will have seen that I at least can use the scanner at the moment. I just hope the 'compatability issues' don't give me grief in the future. Today I will try to install my new Photoshop program and see how that works.

Some things still baffle me a bit. For instance on h2g2 the 'forward' arrow of the browser doesn't seem to work ... so if I backtrack right now to look at the conversation in this thread, I can't move forward back to this message that I'm writing ... I'll lose it. Anyways so there are many such strange things I still need to figure out about this new computer.

Apart from that things are not too bad. Yesterday I did manage to paint a lot, and went to my art class, which went well. I haven't returned to writing my story yet ... I need a very positive and confident in order to do that, and I don't have that yet. Maybe I should try writing a bit today in spite of how I feel but I am afraid I'll be feeling like a fake!