Yontoo a loser (or new computer: yay-ish!)

I am not computer literate. I have two computers, a Facebook account, a blog or four over the years and somehow I still view computers with suspicion and trepidation and once one earns my trust I will stay with it in spite of all sanity. For the last two years I have tolerated a computer that crashes continuously, that can take upwards of two minutes to open a web page and recently became allergic to Facebook and my e-mail account.

So, I have a new computer. It was a Christmas present. Yes, last Christmas. It took me ten months to start using it regularly for a number of reasons but the biggest one turned out to be called Yontoo (or Yondoo, can't quite remember). What is Yontoo?

To quote my friend Matt, a digital professional: “It's not quite spyware.” It sits on your computer and every time your web browser opens a new page it flashes up adverts and “related searches”. It also eats mobile broadband credit like you would not believe. An hour online should not take half a gig (or £3.75 to get financial about it).

That's the main thing that's kept me off this computer: the shit computers come pre-installed with these days. I finally got rid of Yontoo a couple of days ago and suddenly my web browsing is more cash-efficient than on the old computer since opening a webpage takes second. It has Microsoft Office but won't let me use it without giving up more cash so it has Open Office just like my laptop.

(I tried to come up with a simile about it being like pushing the prostitute out the door and calling your wife but it just wasn't coming together).

It also has two web browsers for some reason. Internet Explorer uses less data than Chrome seems to but for some reason I can only buy credit using Chrome. Regardless of which I use some bright spark decided to hide all the menu buttons so it took me a week to make a Favourites list for my daily dose of webcomics.

Sandra On The Rocks seems immune to the Favourites menu, for some reason, just won't save to it.

I found the Favourites menu thanks to a female friend who first spent a while showing me how to find the “InPrivate” setting, the thing Microsoft pretends is so you can buy presents for your wife online without her spotting it on the browser history. Not for porn at all, honest guv. She'd been without internet (or her boyfriend) for a few days so I went and got some snacks from the shop whilst she played with it for a bit (the computer, I mean, honest guv) and then she showed me how to make a new favourites list.

Then she asked me if I fancied ordering pizza, can't figure our why. (Honest, guv.)

Had this conversation so many times today

CO-WORKER: My God, what happened to your face?

JAMES: Jehovah's Witnesses.

CO-WORKER: What did they do to you?

JAMES: Knocked on the door while I was shaving.

At least these things provide my co-workers with some amusement to lighten up their day. It also inspired my direct superior to share some homespun wisdom with me. It seems that the best thing for treating shaving cuts is newspaper: stops it bleeding far quicker than toilet paper or kitchen roll. 

A forced relocation to trades

How do you run a comics blog without any comics? I know I post all sorts of old guff here but the idea was always to be a comics blog. I've been mail ordering my comics for a while since there's nowhere to buy them in Reading. It was less than ideal given the time lag and the Post Office's attitude towards “Do Not Bend” notices but it was something. A few weeks ago the comic shop I order from went out of business and so I ended up a comics blogger with no comics to blog about.

I've spent the last couple of weeks shopping around online trying to find another service but the sale of the Post Office has done horrendous things to p+p costs. Also, it's been a long time since I've actually looked at the individual price of a comic. The monthly cost, yes, the individual unitary cost not so much.

Christmas is coming up. Family birthdays are coming up. My landlady has sold my flat and I'll have to move in the new year. We're living in the longest period of wage repression since records began. Time to change. Time to become part of the problem:

I'm switching to trades.

The benefits are obvious: trades cost less than buying individual instalments; they look good on a shelf; they don't fall apart as easily; they survive being lent to your friends somewhat better than floppies.

I will miss floppies, though. Not so much getting stories in regular instalments but because of something more abstract. The weekly fix of comics has been a part of my life each and every week for damn near twenty years ever since my grandmother bought me an issue of X-Factor at random from a newsagent to keep me quiet. From there I was hooked.

There are less obvious benefits to the switch, though. For once thing it will make me think more critically about what I buy. I have a tendency to buy things out of habit, picking up a series for months after I lose interest in it. Trades may be cheaper in comparison but they're a fair price in and of themselves so I'll need to take a long look at what I was buying before and divide them into the not worth buying; the worth pre-ordering; and, finally, the worth getting once it's dirt cheap on Amazon Used & New.

Young Avengers is a sacred cow. Aside from that everything is up for grabs.