Readers and writers blog

I need a laptop computer, but shopping for one reminds me of a theory proposed by some astronomers that the universe will expand to an apogee, then come slowly shrinking back on itself. Because that’s what’s happening to us.

Fifty years ago, we couldn’t wait to get that bigger car with its bigger swept wings, that bigger house with the bigger family, that bigger job with its bigger paycheck . . . yes, even that bigger hamburger. Now, of course, there are still some idiots consumers who yearn for a big SUV, big muscle car or Big Mac and think that ingesting the latter while watching the former endlessly circle a track is harmless fun. But their day is fading along with the oilmen in the White House.

The rest of us are trying to make smaller footprints on the Earth until somebody realizes there are too many feet.

I suppose I should be thinking about something else — like exactly what I need in that laptop — but it’s too damned confusing. The more compact our technology becomes, the more complex its specifications. I can barely understand this big desktop computer I’m working on right now.

Do I need Dell’s Inspiron 1520 laptop — of which there are three models with various Intel Pentium microprocessors ranging from a 1.73GHz / 533Mhz FSB / 1MB cache to a 2.0GHz / 667Mhz FSB / 2MB cache and prices ranging from $649 to $1,208, not counting the rebates? Or would the Inspiron 1525 be more to my liking with its Vista rather than XP operating system, a similar variety of caches and prices ranging from $499 to $1,253, not counting other rebates?

Are they kidding?

Well, I’m not kidding about needing a laptop. Because at the end of this month, my wife and I and her parents are taking our first extended trip since this website-weblog began. And we’re going where there are numbers that I can understand and appreciate.

For example, 90. That’s the birthday my wife’s Aunt Maxine will celebrate on June 2 in Huntington, Ind. She’s the benign sovereign of a family of six siblings, and a nicer woman you won’t find. Second in that line is my father-in-law, Glenn, who’ll be 88 a few days later. My mother-in-law, Virginia, will be 84 before then. So the four of us are going to pack into the smallest van we can find and head for Indiana on a nine-day trip.

I can’t pack up this desktop, so it’s going to have to be a laptop if I hope to continue posting entries twice a week on our weblog.

Like technology, large families also are shrinking, but there are four other footprints on this Earth that I’m glad of — my wife’s two sons, Todd and Brett, who grew up smart about computers and who just may have bailed me out.

Todd gave me general information about laptops, and Brett helped me review some of the offerings on the Internet before noticing that I didn’t seem to understand much of what was being said, then diplomatically mentioning that he and Todd have a laptop they haven’t used for a while. A little slower than the new Dells, but plenty for what I need. A lot less expensive, too.

What this world needs is not more people but more smart people. Thanks, guys. Now I’ve got to learn how to use the damned thing.

More new offerings today in Works:

• A new short story by James L. Fox called ‘Lonesome Charlie,’ the tale of a grizzled old prospector who has an unusual way of finding people to talk with in his remote desert existence.

• Chapter 16: Conversations of Steve Karmazenuk’s science fiction novel The Unearthing. Scientists have their first communication with an alien spaceship in the New Mexico desert, a craft that seems to have its own life qualities, including an intelligence that dwarfs that of humans.

• Chapter 10: 45th Avenue of Gerard Jones’ nonfiction novel Ginny Good. Gerard goes to his first date with Ginny but runs into a few pitfalls — she apparently has forgotten the date, the battery runs down on his borrowed car, and later, when he’s finally making headway at her house, she is called away by another boyfriend.

Talk to you later. I’ll be the guy wrestling with the laptop.

– Sid Leavitt