Like a Siren It Promises Everything New

Make fun of me all you want, but you must admit I am a bit of a pioneer. To prove it, I will give you a few examples.

Back in '67, our family moved from Rochester, New York to Tucson, Arizona. Most people think it was our father who got this going, but who do you think was behind him, like a mosquito in his ear?....Me.

Of course, my motivation was based on the fact that the city had just experienced a violent race riot and things were looking pretty scary. My goal was personal safety, but so what. We moved to Tucson, didn't we?

Then there was that topless bar debacle. Ok, so it lost a lot of money and was a total idiotic idea...but today topless bars rule in Tucson. Nobody said being a trailblazer is all candy and roses. Sometimes it's bikers riding their Hogs on your dance floor and pouring themselves free drinks while you are hiding under the desk in the office.

Getting out of America and moving to New Zealand? Of course, Kimberly was a big influence on taking this bold move...but, again...Pathfinders. Someday soon, people will be clamoring to get over here. This will happen after the terrorists figure out how to cross our well fortified borders with some sort of dirty bomb headed for L.A.

And we can witness it all from our little bungalow here in Nelson.....Pioneers.

So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I would be one of the first to get my hands on the new Windows operating system, VISTA. Fer Christ's sake, we used to live in Vista! How prophetic is that? Here is how this went down.

I was in a computer store with a large sign on my forehead that said, "I need to spend some money". Here was this package for the new Windows Vista - $399NZ. But there was another one just the same for "academic use" for $199. Hey! I sez to myself..I'm a teacher, I can save a couple hundred here.

Bought it, took it home, installed it. I'm a friggin' scout, I am.

Then the trouble started.

After a 2 hour upgrade, a lot of the programs that were just dandy with Windows XP, didn't want to go to work. Plus, the computer speed was cut down a whole lot. It took forever just to turn it on. I immediately wished I wasn't a teacher with a discount.After fooling around for a day or two most things were running fairly well, but it still was very slow and annoying.

Come to find out that VISTA uses most of the memory in the computer. For it to work, you need at least twice as much as we had. So... back to the computer store... bought memory ($230NZ), everything is fine again on the old Oregon Trail.

VISTA is a nice looking system and someday, like topless bars, it will be popular. But my advice is to wait until you buy a new computer to get it.

You can thank me now.