My mother uses an 7 year old computer running Windows 98, and I decided that I wanted to help her upgrade. Even though hardware really isn’t my forte, I wanted to do something nice for my ma. I bought a used computer off of Craig’s List, and without getting into TOO many sorry details, let’s just say that I got totally scammed. And that I fully knew better, and let myself get scammed anyway. TRIPLE STUPIDITY!

The realization that I’d been scammed resulted in much agonized tooth gnashing and tears shed in the name of frustration. I AM SUPPOSED TO BE SMARTER THAN THAT! What a dumb-ass. Better yet, there were two waves of this agony, the first on Friday night when I realized the computer didn’t boot up, and the second on Sunday when, after hours of tech support from friends, I got the computer to boot up only to realize that the supposed 15 gb hard drive was actually, well, a 2 gb drive worth exactly $12.00. Like I said: SCAMMED. (And no, there’s no recourse: I paid cash and the seller is predictably MIA, probably out selling other stolen computers and smoking meth in his apartment in Renton.)

Thanks to the generosity of geeky friends, the computer has been salvaged. A gifted 10 gb hard drive here, a freshly purchased 56k dial up modem there, and I’m pretty sure my mother will be happy. The project has been outrageously frustrating, and has pushed me up and over all sorts of edges. But the good parts are this: I mastered my fear of reaching into the guts of a PC (I physically installed a hard drive all by myself! With screws!), and I learned that even if someone seems trustworthy, you always double check what they’re selling you. And if you can’t, you don’t buy it. This second lesson is something I already knew, but evidently I needed to pay about $200 in tuition to really drive the idea home.

Oh, and geemunsta@hotmail.com? FUCK YOU. It’s not worth my time to call the cops or track you down, but I have every faith that you’ll get what’s coming to you. Karma’s a bitch, you asshole.