Settling in

It's funny how completely alien a place can feel when you first move there. In the beginning, it's an empty, barren wasteland with nothing but an old carpet, some tiling and your boxes to break up the monotomy of blandness. Somehow, over the course of two semesters, you realize as you begin to pack up that what was a bland place metamorphizied into home.

Computers are similar. After my hard drive fried on my iMac, and after I installed the new one, beneath the exterior I knew so well lay a foreign land that was completely not my computer. There was nothing to seperate this iMac's innards from any other. Yet, in a similar way to settling into a new place of residence, you suddenly realize when you frantically start backing up all your important files because of a few corrupted files that make you fear your hard drive is dying how much your computer it has become.

Now I sit here with a PC, one my Dad is letting me have so long as he can use it himself for a while. Once again, the thing doesn't feel the slightest bit like my computer. Obviously, one problem here is that it is a PC, and I've never had one before. Another problem is the obvious lack of any games beyond 3D Pinball and Solitaire. Still another problem is all the unmodified, generic stuff like system sounds and backgrounds. Heck, even the background I just threw up on the desktop to get rid of the default doesn't feel a thing like me.

But, I'm not trying to rush things too much. I know that by the time the summer's done and I'm flying over to Japan that this computer I'm typing on now will have such a definitive "me" flavor that I'll hardly be able to remember a time when it was bland.

I'll be too busy playing games to be that deep.