Computers: The past ten years...

There's six pages to this, but the bottom line is that they've come a long way in the past ten years. So I won't display these other five pages of it.

This caught my eye because I first started on computers as a total newbie in August of 2004, so next month will be my tenth anniversary with computers too. And at the risk of bragging a little, I'm a whole hell of a lot smarter now than I was back then. 

The trick's to get over your fear of flying, stare down that Blue Screen of Death, take deep breaths, ask a lot of questions, do a lot of Googling for answers, and keep trying until you get it right. Don't believe everything you read, especially in forums where the kids love to screw you around just for the hell of it, and learn how to make good use of Microsoft's  Knowledge Base, where you can actually learn things. 

Keep your operating system's installation disk handy, clean, and ready for action, because sooner or later, you're going to need it. And don't be afraid to use it when that time comes. Put it into a DVD cover, and write your Key Codes on the lid so you can't lose them. Get one, two or three good security programs, and keep them updated with fresh databases, so they can do something if required. And don't be afraid to try something new. There's more to this than email and YouTube, and websites where the girls are so poor they can't afford clothes, or so rich they don't care.

And you too can go from being a total newbie who doesn't know the difference between a byte and a bit, or a CPU and a GPU, to being able to wipe out the whole thing, re-format the main drive, and reinstall the operating system and be back on line in less than an hour. Following which, it takes much longer than that to restore all your programs and files, but we won't go there just now...

And perhaps my best trick is to have two computers, so that I can continue using one if the other has a major problem and I need to go on line to get the solution for it. It's the same sort of trick that fallers used in the forestry industry; they kept a spare chainsaw under the bunk in case theirs died prematurely.