So You Bought a New Computer..

The Trials for the Older Computer Buyer

So, you're 'over the hill' (that's 40 in youthspeak), and you've bought your new computer.

After 20 minutes, you managed to locate the manual, ever-so-conveniently packed on the end marked "THIS SIDE DOWN." Despite the manufacturer's best efforts at obfuscation, you have deciphered the Japanese-to-Dutch-to-English translation buried behind the Spanish and French instructions, and discovered that friendly message in fine print on the back page "No Cables Included."

So, technophobe that you are, you are stuck with going in to your local big box electronics retailer chockfull of 20somethings ready to do battle... errr, help you. You have your Geek-to-English translator in-hand, bribed your neighbor's 12-year-old to come in as technical backup, and taken pictures of the sockets on the back and front of the nice gray box known as your CPU (but fondly referred to by members of your household as R2). You leave your house with hopes of making this a single trip.

Upon arrival at the MegaCircuit TechnoMart, the thunder coming from the music department is nearly being overwhelmed by the sounds of gunfire from the gaming department and the explosions from the home theater section. Despite this auditory onslaught and your fight-or-flight reflex kicked into DefCon 5, you eventually find the section marked "COMPUTERS."

And then you are almost required to wander around the cable section, pictures in hand, printed in full-color, life-size versions, in an attempt at self-service, even though you pass a sales clerk, engaged in a conversation with someone of approximately their same age and edgy hairstyle, overhearing a conversation that may as well be ancient Sumerian for all the good it does you.

Finally, you locate what you think are the right cables, but since even the 12-year-old isn't certain and the translator was useless, you stepped up to the side of the clerk, hoping that they will notice you, despite the obvious fervor from their conversation about latest megagigaflop video processor with parallel-processing-doodle display capabilities.