As a Cal Berkeley freshman in 1965, my greatest fear was being caught up in a spontaneous political uprising inside Sproul Hall, while waiting in the endless pre-computer registration line at No. 120, and maybe being tear-gassed and locked in for the night with an angry bunch of protesters . . . maybe even being swayed by Mario Savio's eloquence. As a Berkeley senior in 1998, I worry about losing the protests and eloquent speeches, losing the old ways of communicating. I worry about becoming subservient to and dependent upon technology. Just in case, I accidentally drop a few apple- cinnamon muffin crumbs into my keyboard.
On the family-room couch at midnight, I hover over my eldest son's Toshiba 4800 CT laptop, which glows on the oak trunk, the trunk I used to have time to dust and polish. I need desperately for this thing to boot up. My youngest son's Macintosh, in the dining room, has mercilessly crashed and taken the first scene of my screenplay with it.
Luckily, I'm a realist about the techno-age and have roughed it out longhand, but I'm left with a novice- unfriendly PC. I'm presenting my work in a screenwriting class tomorrow and need 12 copies.
I've read somewhere that hackers cajole their computers. "Come on, don't you like me? I'll treat ya good. I won't drink coffee near you or drop muffin crumbs between your tiny fingers. I'll put you in your little docker every night and cover you. Nothing . . . suddenly, PC VIRUS, gibberish, SAFE MODE, STICKY A DRIVE. No language I can grasp.
It's so late; please boot. My eyes well up. Falling back into my formerly comforting corduroy couch, I put one foot up on the edge of the trunk. Dangerously close to the monitor, it takes all the willpower I've ever had not to boot the frigging thing smack across the room.
When my boys set up a computer folder for me, they named it Wally's Folder. They were referring to Wally Cleaver, the Beav's brother, the clueless one.
I remember "Leave It to Beaver" before the reruns; I remember when a megabite was something you took from your roommate's late-night Giant Burger. A printer was someone who refused to do it in cursive. A curser was my Dad when Cal was losing the Big Game.
I personally remember when boot up was something you did with your Red Mountain wine all over your cheap date, who wove his VW up the nauseating horseshoe turns of Panoramic Drive. I remember Cal when English majors used typewriters and engineering students were content with slide rules.
The morning after the night I almost sent the Toshiba to the moon, the telephone rings. It's 7:15 a.m. After four rings, I find the phone under the bed. "MMMMM lo? This better be good," my standard remark to anyone who calls before 8 a.m.
"Well, it is my birthday," my eldest son asserts from job training in New York.
"Happy birthday, sweetie. Thanks for letting me be the first one to say it. How's your day going?"
"Considering I have a 104-degree fever and didn't get the birthday package you sent, I'd say I've had better: It's my tonsils again. They're so huge, they block the passage to my nose. I have to walk around with my mouth hanging open to breathe.There are also globs of putrid pus stuck in them."
This is a bit more wake-up information than I need. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Matthew." I can't make his birthdays wonderful anymore.
"How was your first week back at the Big U, after a 30-year sabbatical?"
"Oh my gosh, I've got to get up." Remembering my unfinished document, I bolt out of bed. "I hate your computer."
"What have you done to my computer now, Mom? Mom?"
"Happy birthday, baby. Stay in bed. I'll call you tonight."
This morning is too late to tackle the campus Computer Lab for the first time, So I opt for Copy Central. At least there, I'll have an understanding employee, one I'll be paying by the minute to help me.
Instead of breakfast, I jump in my car, but can't find the anti-theft key that'll let the motor start, so I run upstairs for a flashlight, try to search under the car seat. Of course the flashlight doesn't work. New plan. Run back upstairs to get my bike lock, change from a skirt to pants, catch my pants' button as it flies off, and decide to sew on the button in my first class in 12 minutes, a good seven miles away. I pedal my bike to campus like a maniac at Mach-10.
The bike locks on campus are like nothing I've ever seen; apparatus you couldn't figure out if your life depended on it. I'm sure a bright engineering student won a prize for economy of design and creativity, but I am confounded. Which bike wheel is it that thieves steal anyway?
I lock my bike to a nearby Stop sign, certain of a parking ticket when I return, the campus kind you have to stand in line to pay off, or the kind you don't find out about until your registration is blocked. Winded and late to my overcrowded class, I disrupt the esteemed guest lecturer, sit on the floor, and have a hot flash.
The debacle the night before compelled me to retrieve my original disk from the headstrong Mac by poking that hard-driving little Apple in the eye. It is a simple and hopefully painful procedure: Just open up a paper clip and poke clean into that tiny hole near the floppy drive.
Between classes, disk in hand, I run over to Copy Central to print my screenplay scene on their Mac. How can I command respect from these insolent machines when I can't domesticate my own? I flail under the contentious Copy Central mistress' cold stare. She prints my 12 copies with a deft hand and a curled lip. I hand over $6.49 with a deft hand, as my lip curls discreetly back at her.
By the time I get to Screenwriting, my professor is explaining why the first scene presentations will be delayed until next week. "And because you're late, Bonnie, you may be first to present the second scene, on October 1." This doesn't surprise me. October 1 is the day after our 30th wedding anniversary, when 20 people are coming to our house to celebrate.
It's time to bite the bullet, to descend the basement steps to hell, the steps of Evans Hall and the world of the Cal Computer Lab. Can't find the stairs that go down, so I wait for a locked elevator that never comes. I reluctantly ask an observant-looking student, "Where are the steps that go down?"
"Right next to the ones that go up."
Oh.
At the window with the sign, "E- mail next door," a man with dull eyes and a slack jaw listens to my spiel. "I've never been to the Computer Lab before, so I'll need some help. You see, I'm a re-entry student . . ."
"Lab's next door, ma'am," he says, without moving his lips.
I'm obviously the only student who read the Daily Cal article saying 10-story Evans Hall is one of the most seismically unsafe buildings on campus, because the waiting room is packed with unsuspecting potential earthquake victims.
The sign-up sheet says Mac or PC. Since our Mac has crashed, my only hope is to try the PC. "Do you have a printer account?" the young computer expert behind the counter asks. The way my luck is going, I'd better sign up for everything.
"Go ahead and sign up," she coaxes, angling the desk monitor and sliding the mouse toward me. But the little rodent has a mind of its own. The on-screen arrow moves in the opposite direction, like looking into a mirror. I try to direct it backwards. "You're holding it upside down. Up-side-down?"
Oooh.
The bike locks on campus are like nothing I've ever seen; apparatus you couldn't figure out if your life depended on it. I'm sure a bright engineering student won a prize for economy of design and creativity, but I am confounded. Which bike wheel is it that thieves steal anyway?
I lock my bike to a nearby Stop sign, certain of a parking ticket when I return, the campus kind you have to stand in line to pay off, or the kind you don't find out about until your registration is blocked. Winded and late to my overcrowded class, I disrupt the esteemed guest lecturer, sit on the floor, and have a hot flash.
The debacle the night before compelled me to retrieve my original disk from the headstrong Mac by poking that hard-driving little Apple in the eye. It is a simple and hopefully painful procedure: Just open up a paper clip and poke clean into that tiny hole near the floppy drive.
Between classes, disk in hand, I run over to Copy Central to print my screenplay scene on their Mac. How can I command respect from these insolent machines when I can't domesticate my own? I flail under the contentious Copy Central mistress' cold stare. She prints my 12 copies with a deft hand and a curled lip. I hand over $6.49 with a deft hand, as my lip curls discreetly back at her.
By the time I get to Screenwriting, my professor is explaining why the first scene presentations will be delayed until next week. "And because you're late, Bonnie, you may be first to present the second scene, on October 1." This doesn't surprise me. October 1 is the day after our 30th wedding anniversary, when 20 people are coming to our house to celebrate.
It's time to bite the bullet, to descend the basement steps to hell, the steps of Evans Hall and the world of the Cal Computer Lab. Can't find the stairs that go down, so I wait for a locked elevator that never comes. I reluctantly ask an observant-looking student, "Where are the steps that go down?"
"Right next to the ones that go up."
Oh.
At the window with the sign, "E- mail next door," a man with dull eyes and a slack jaw listens to my spiel. "I've never been to the Computer Lab before, so I'll need some help. You see, I'm a re-entry student . . ."
"Lab's next door, ma'am," he says, without moving his lips.
I'm obviously the only student who read the Daily Cal article saying 10-story Evans Hall is one of the most seismically unsafe buildings on campus, because the waiting room is packed with unsuspecting potential earthquake victims.
The sign-up sheet says Mac or PC. Since our Mac has crashed, my only hope is to try the PC. "Do you have a printer account?" the young computer expert behind the counter asks. The way my luck is going, I'd better sign up for everything.
"Go ahead and sign up," she coaxes, angling the desk monitor and sliding the mouse toward me. But the little rodent has a mind of its own. The on-screen arrow moves in the opposite direction, like looking into a mirror. I try to direct it backwards. "You're holding it upside down. Up-side-down?"
Oooh.
My turn comes; the girl takes my Student ID and gives me card 6G in return. Passing a hundred computer cubicles, I see three student helpers on staff. This is good. Cubicle 6G looks private enough, in case this machine too, needs a poke in the eye. My PC commands PASSWORD. Don't have one. The helper in the hall directs me to the front desk to sign up for a password. I get my SID card back and someone else gets 6G while I register for a password. I do not hold the mouse upside down. I choose the first six numbers of my new SID card and write them on my hand, wisely remembering they hold your SID card hostage at the desk. My new Cubicle 4A is right next to the helper's desk for Wallys. It occurs to me that unless I want to look up my first six SID numbers every time, I should return to the front desk and change my password to a real word. By now the front desk girl calls me by name, and they let me keep 4A. Back in my cubicle, I type in my official personal password. Next it commands Userid, which the helper discreetly explains is my SID number, which is on my SID card, which is with the front desk clerk. The clerk is vey sweet. She writes down my number, suggesting, "Students who haven't memorized their numbers usually keep a copy in their wallet." I swear she adds "Dummy," under her breath. Now I'm ready to type in the password, user ID number, and choose a program. ERROR OF THE FIRST TYPE HAS OCCURRED. Frozen screen. The hapless-helper is busy with another Wally for nearly 10 minutes. Returning, he shrugs at my monitor and simply reboots. We wait another five minutes. Ready. I type in my password, my SID, get that tootling connecting sound and smugly lean back, arms crossed, and ask the boy in 4B for the time. He looks confused, "Isn't it right there on your screen?"
Yikes. I have four minutes to make it across campus to my 3 p.m. library Meta-Search Engine workshop.
I hear Moffitt Library has user- friendly Gladys and Melville, but no longer to my surprise, I find they're not a couple of sweet old librarians, but a computer index database. Pity the lady who inadvertently sits down at one of the talking computers while others are waiting and pacing.
There is a secret card I know of to use on the copy machines at Doe Library. Once someone closed a row of shelves on me in the bowels of Doe, while searching the stacks. Now, I cough politely when I hear incoming footsteps.
I want to learn how to renew my library books online and get my grades from the glassed-in computer in Wheeler basement. I want e-mail, a Berkeley Internet kit, my own UCLink. I want to understand the hostile lesbian rhetorical fury scribbled on the bathroom stalls. I want to know the difference between Tele-BEARS, Info-BEARS and Bear Facts. I intend to scan my transparencies on a slide scanner with Photoshop, and turn an image of my dog into a three-headed Cerberus. I'll have Lexis-Nexus and HTML at my beck and call.
And I'll not be intimidated by the hallowed Bancroft, the library of rare documents, where before entering, you must lock up all your earthly belongings, sign your life away in two places, get metal-detected, no pens, no browsing, take a seat number, a place mat, request your title and "Sit, you will be summoned." I'll no longer worry about such trivialities. I've outgrown that.
Except for almost falling down a flight of stairs, my bike ride home is beautifully uneventful. Around 11 p.m. of this longest day, I go downstairs to lock up. A luminous full moon shines on me through the open door. "Oh, no wonder," I say out loud to no one in particular.
From upstairs, my husband calls, "Does the full moon affect you?"
"Nooooooo," I howl sweetly.
Yikes. I have four minutes to make it across campus to my 3 p.m. library Meta-Search Engine workshop.
I hear Moffitt Library has user- friendly Gladys and Melville, but no longer to my surprise, I find they're not a couple of sweet old librarians, but a computer index database. Pity the lady who inadvertently sits down at one of the talking computers while others are waiting and pacing.
There is a secret card I know of to use on the copy machines at Doe Library. Once someone closed a row of shelves on me in the bowels of Doe, while searching the stacks. Now, I cough politely when I hear incoming footsteps.
I want to learn how to renew my library books online and get my grades from the glassed-in computer in Wheeler basement. I want e-mail, a Berkeley Internet kit, my own UCLink. I want to understand the hostile lesbian rhetorical fury scribbled on the bathroom stalls. I want to know the difference between Tele-BEARS, Info-BEARS and Bear Facts. I intend to scan my transparencies on a slide scanner with Photoshop, and turn an image of my dog into a three-headed Cerberus. I'll have Lexis-Nexus and HTML at my beck and call.
And I'll not be intimidated by the hallowed Bancroft, the library of rare documents, where before entering, you must lock up all your earthly belongings, sign your life away in two places, get metal-detected, no pens, no browsing, take a seat number, a place mat, request your title and "Sit, you will be summoned." I'll no longer worry about such trivialities. I've outgrown that.
Except for almost falling down a flight of stairs, my bike ride home is beautifully uneventful. Around 11 p.m. of this longest day, I go downstairs to lock up. A luminous full moon shines on me through the open door. "Oh, no wonder," I say out loud to no one in particular.
From upstairs, my husband calls, "Does the full moon affect you?"
"Nooooooo," I howl sweetly.
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