William Gates! I will meet you at the gates!
Because of my age, or should I say “Bcos of mi age”, most young people assume that I am a total computer illiterate. Most of my young critics can’t even spell the word illlliterrrate let alone know the meaning of it.
My favourite niece Samanmalee (Sam) who is my biggest critic, recently bought a Samsung Tablet thing, but she then couldn’t understand the written instructions! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Illustrations by N. Senthilkumaran
She had to ask Old Uncle to help her out and she grudgingly accepted my assistance! Ha!
What most people don’t realise is that I am much older than William, William Gates that is, and better known as Bill Gates. I got into the world of computers in 1979 and long before him, and my very first computer had a working capacity of 1 KB and the memory thing was a separate small tape recorder with a compact cassette. There was no monitor; you just connected it to the TV.
Remember machine code?
My then wife educated herself on how to programme it. She learnt Basic and then something called Machine Code which looked somewhat like this:
000100 10101 11100 100101 110010 11101 00100 00110 00011 11000 000100 10101 11100 000101 010010 10101 00100 00110.
Between ourselves and before we eventually got divorced, we managed to keep pace with things. My wife used to complain that the computer was beer-powered because it took a lot of beer on my part to get it to work.
Things have changed quite a lot. Most youngsters now have computer things; complete with irritating ring tones,in all eight pockets of their three-quarter-length trousers, but no one really knows the workings of these things….except Mr. Bill Gates. Actually, William Gates didn’t know anything either.
One of my favourite machines was an IBM which worked on what was called OS1. OS2 was promised but it never really caught on and this was all because of Bill. To this day I believe that the IBM system was much better
“Dear IBM, we miss you!
William “Bill” Gates was then a spotty-faced teenager with thick-rimmed glasses and was not doing well in High School. One night, instead of doing his homework, he wrote to IBM:
“deer…I mean dear sir ihve new op sys. U want 2 buy?… Ur frend Bill Gates”
IBM, being a staid old organization, wrote back:
“Dear Mr. William Gates,
We are in receipt of your letter outlining a new Operating System for our new line of IBM Computer Devices. We already have an operating system known as Operating System One or in short form, OS1.We do not necessarily refer to our products in short form and as you well know our full name is: “International Business Machines”. For reasons of practicality we refer to our company as IBM. May God forgive us.
We do not really need another programme of any type. Personally, we do not even think that your suggested name for this programme, “Microsoft” is appropriate. What kind of a name is that? We have wives and children!
We remain,
Yours truly…etc”
Well, you know the rest of the story. William went his own way and launched Microsoft and we all bought it and paid for it, if you know what I mean!!
At this point, IBM exited stage left licking their wounds and William went on to become a zillionaire!
Broken windows
Sadly, William Gates has now forgotten his humble beginings. We were loyal. First we subscribed to MicrosoftWindows Zero, Win 1, then Windows 95,98etc., we went through Windows XP and Vista………….now we are on Microsoft Windows8.
Nothing has ever really worked! Just when you get your machine going happily and in harmony with the ops sys, out comes a new version of Windows. What really gets me is that every new version is worse than the one before and needs a lot of patches, bandages, plaster casts and intensive medical care for them to work.
You wouldn’t buy a brand new car and then spend time fitting new tyres, headlamps, windscreen wipers etc. would you? So why should you buy the latest version of Windows and reach dangerous, personal, hypertensive levels of cardiac function by having to “Windows Update” it?
Every time things get updated, the machine decides to have a stroke and flashes the Blue Screen of Death. You then need to resuscitate it with a sort of cardiac massage called a rollback!
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Many years ago when I lived in GB I had a lovely, sexy little Dell machine. She got on well with me and Windows XP. They were really good friends and sometimes at night I could actually hear them whispering to each other. Hard drives were whirring and a few girly giggles and squeaks came out. How lovely? Ahhhh!
I hoped that they would get married one day and produce a litter of Dell-XP kittens.
Then one day I foolishly went and “upgraded” to Vista and things rapidly started going wrong in my life! The Dell girl didn’t like Vista. She refused to speak to me! Insanity reigned!
Our cat “Megabite” (sic), who liked the warmth of the Dell girl and who usually slept next to her, started meowing loudly and raising her fur at me in a disapproving manner. The wife did more or less the same, growled rather than meow, I must say; and slammed a few doors for good measure. It was too late to realize that, instead of naming the cat,I should have named my wife “Megabite”.
After a few manic days of trying to get things to work, and with the room cluttered with “empties” and half eaten pizzas,I suddenly noticed that my wife had left me. In exasperation, I threw the whole works out of the window forgetting that the window was closed and that we lived in a third floor flat.
The Police came around and generally agreed with my sentiments about Bill Gates and Vista; but, inexplicably, they refused to serve a warrant on him!Can you believe that? They then cautioned me!
Apparently, throwing a computer out of a closed window is an offence! So is the use of foul language.
With a brilliant display of bravado, I then challenged them to arrest me and they obliged. The Magistrate was much more sympathetic and banned me from going anywhere near a computer or a computer shop for 30 days.
Computer rage
I am not the only one who has this love-hate relationship with computers. Herr Helmut Horstmann of Berlin got so frustrated with his computer that, one day, he decided to set fire to it using petrol. Swearing in German, he was in the act of siphoning off petrol from his brand new Mercedes Benz, when he suddenly realized that he had a lit cigarette dangling from his lower lip in Hollywood fashion.
At the very moment that he realized this, a fireball erupted which completely destroyed the Mercedes as well as part of the house.
The computer remained undamaged!
Well, all this is because of William Gates!
Never mind. Bill Gates, I will meet you at The Gates.