Jenny-fa

My mother is stupid. When it comes to computers and technology, her thinking and reasoning are akin to that of a Neanderthal.

Take my newest sentence, for example. My dear mother has given me ’til the end of the month to clear out all of my personal and school-related data from our home computer (and burn only the essential files onto CDs). She isn’t letting me keep anything, even school reports or my Web design work, on the hard drive.

Her scatter-brained reasoning is this:

1. Without a personal account or any of my data, I’ll be forced to utilize the computer only for homework-related purposes.
2. I’ll have to ask permission every time I need to use it.
3. I’ll focus more on practicing for the SAT.
4. And I’ll finally stop watching Inuyasha episodes on the computer.

Ahem. Does she even realize how dreadfully inconvenient (and impractical) that would be? Every time I would need to refer back to a document that I wrote earlier, I would have to hunt through all of my files scattered across perhaps ten or more CDs. When I write a new document or obtain a new image file, I would have to burn it onto a CD and delete it from the hard drive. When I edit a file previously saved onto a CD, I would be forced to reburn the entire stupid thing. And if for some reason Mom is in one of her “murderous” moods (or even a tiny bit upset), I would have to carefully stay out of her sight, bide my time, and wait for her to simmer down before I even think about asking her permission to access her account.

And listen to this: She found out about this blog, and she screamed herself silly for disclosing “personal information” about myself and my family, as well as warning me that my younger cousin Julie was “now in danger” because I mentioned her one or two times.

Now, really, I have only referred to Julie by her first name, and I disclosed no personal information or geographical locations. In short, nothing that would make anyone a potential target for stalkers, axe murderers, or serial rapists.

And lastly, my dear mother has forbidden me to carry on with my Web design work or maintaining any of my existing sites (perhaps out of that same, irrational fear that I would compromise the safety of others). Since I was planning a major redesign for one of them (and seeing none of my files can remain on the computer for much longer), that didn’t go over too well with Jenny-fa.

As anyone with half a brain would realize, this is not a desirable situation to be in. Which is why I’m secretly buying an external hard drive.