I used to have a computer. I used to think it was pretty nice too. I certainly spent a lot of money on it. Anyway, after having it for a while and impressing all my friends with my fantastic RAM and CPU and graphics cards and Gigabytes of memory (not that I knew or know what any of that means), I was getting pretty comfortable with using it. I installed a whole bunch of programs on it, wrote documents, made presentations, surfed the internet, made new friends on Facebook and stalked celebrities on Twitter. I played music, watched videos, played MMORPGs (again, no idea what that means but hey-ho), did internet banking and received emails. My machine was my best friend. And then our relationship started going downhill.

Slowly Does It

Suddenly, as if overnight, my internet browser started not responding quite regularly. All I had to do was try to navigate between one tab and another, and it would stop responding. It was the same if I moved from one program to the next. Every time my inbox was automatically receiving messages, everything else would slow down to unworkable speeds. But then came the killer strike, the one I really couldn’t deal with.

I love, and I do mean love, Facebook games. I have multiple farms, a café, houses, islands, fantasy kingdoms, zoos, dinosaur parks and theme parks. I solve mysteries, find clues and help my friends with tools and seeds and paintings. This is my whole life. I go to bed at night working out whether or not I planted my crops at the right time so I won’t find them withered in the morning, worrying about feeding my animals and hoping nobody breaks in to one of my buildings or attacks my Mafia crew. If I can’t check on all of this, I go into a downward spiral of despair and anxiety. And that is exactly what happened.

No More Games

Thinking I could deal with my computer working slowly and my browser and other programs not responding every once in a while, I woke up in the morning, switched on and started my game. And it just wasn’t possible anymore. My computer, with all its RAM and fantastic CPU, simply couldn’t cope with a single one of my Facebook games anymore. I would take me at least 10 minutes to water a single crop. I would run out of time on my hidden objects game because the computer wasn’t reading my actions. My Mafia crew was seriously reduced to almost nothing because I kept getting killed off. My zoo animals had died. It was a total disaster.

Payback Time

I know I shouldn’t have done it, but that stupid machine took my life away. I am a Scorpio and Scorpios like revenge. So, as I was once again refused access to my fantasy kingdom, I slowly but surely trickled my cup of coffee all over my keyboard and “accidentally” spilled some on my tower. Believe it or not, it then dared to spark electricity at me and blow smoke at me! As if I was the one causing this problem! So, I had to teach it a lesson, there was nothing else to it. I’m a pacifist at heart, but that hot, stinking puff of smoke that it blew out in my face made me see red. So I kicked it. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I did. I kicked it real hard as well. Wanting to make sure no one would ever find out what I did, I threw it in my local pond.

McAfee UK is one thing that can certainly help you to stop your computer from going up in smoke. Confessing to a computer geek friend of mine, apparently all I had was a virus…