Today

I write on paper because i harbour the almost certainly flawed idea that notes taken on physical paper last longer. This is a note I want to last a while so I recognise this error in my thinking, and choose to document today's events here. My onenote notebooks haven't quit on me yet. Neither have my physical notebooks but I dont know where half of them are and they are more likely to be destroyed by climate change/tossed out by an overenthusiastic cleaner.

It's been a rough year, and I won't go into documenting all of it for my future self because I'm sure most of it is etched into my memory, and if it isn't, I don't want it to be. The one thing I do want to be etched into my memory is today's sequence of events which, for all its mundanity, is a perfect representation of my relationship with nana and one I want to remember.

Since being discharged from the hospital for post-covid pneumonia and who knows how many other infections/diseases, nana's been set up in my masi's house in Noida. Ju and I signed marriage papers last week so we headed over to Noida today  to a) make a more official 'couple' visit to masi + co (including dogs + cousin)  and, b) more importantly for me, to see nana. 

I took my laptop along because nana and I are united by computers and all my perceived geekiness today can be directly attributed to years spent at nana's side playing video games on a nintendo (Mappy and Battle City mostly - he'd strategise defeating Battle City levels with me as player B - parked in one corner destroying incoming enemies), trying to install prince of persia on our first home PC when I was 9, and then copying out BASIC programmes from actual paper programming books to see how they work (and that's how I met ELIZA). 

So today when i met him, and told him I had my computer, he was all blasé like 'what can I do with that?' - implying he's too weak and useless to be interested in playing with me. 

That didn't last long.

Masi called him out to the dining table for lunch and he refused to eat alone at the table until he was convinced that we would be there too nursing our beer/wine. He had a whole meal while vaguely contributing to a conversation about Rampur Hounds and after his dessert of one entire sharifa casually told me that he had installed Windows 11.

But Windows 11 isn't out yet, nana. 

I got it before its release. It comes out on fifth October.

But how?

You have to be part of the insider programme.

But how?

-gesture to bring out the laptop-

Go to settings…

And from there it was ON. 

We went to settings, and in the update centre I discovered that to be a part of the insider programme, I had to give microsoft access to my data and activity - I never do this, but it seemed worth it and they know everything about me anyway so…

Then a restart - then installing another update. Then welcome to the insider programme, and access to the preview of Windows 11. Which required a very long download. So we started it. 

I went off to have lunch while it downloaded, and actually talk to the other less significant members of my family. Because politeness, protocol etc. In between nana called me again to tell me my computer had switched of during the download. It hadn't, it had only gone to sleep, but after dessert and  coffee I was called over and had to adjust power settings because having my computer go to sleep during an active download is simply unacceptable. 

Luckily I have been trained well and my power settings were mostly 'correct' - power button is to shut down, closing the lid puts the computer to sleep on battery and does nothing on AC power. All I had to do was change the screen on sleep timer to 30 minutes on battery, and never on AC power. 

While doing that, nana checked up on my other software. Avast is useless so needed to be uninstalled. But wait - no MalwareBytes? No Geek Uninstaller? No Networx? I got them off the USB key where he stores all his apps. By the time they were done (MalwareBytes refused to run until my laptop was in Nana's hands, don't tell me technology doesn't have a soul) so was the download for Windows and we were ready to install. 

Nail-biting timer-watching followed, as first we raved about the speed with which it installed, only (for me) to realise that this was just the first part of the whole project and the real install was after the restart. 

It takes a while to get to 30 percent but then it jumps to 70 percent right after, Nana told me. 

HA, nana doesn't know EVERYTHING. While it certainly did restart after 30%, it then jumped to 48% and then rapidly to 65% - not 70 but 65! HA!

I know it doesn't really count and he was right anyway. 

And then, a few minutes later, it was done. By now it had been four hours since I had arrived, and I did go hang out with the dogs and the fam for a few minutes in between, but are they really necessary in this story? I don't think so. 

We were both pretty worn down by now, but ofc nana more so than me. So he told me to join the windows eleven forums (the windows forums (fora, really) are the apparent source of his super powers) and kicked me out.

He did also briefly meet julien, who you would think would get a more warm welcome and some interaction, but honestly as a Mac user with no contribution to make to our exercise, he was just not important enough to acknowledge for more than a few seconds, and after a brief hello was left to his own devices. 

'I know more than most people about computers' Nana told me at the end of it all. 

I know - that's why I know more than most people know about computers, I said. 

Most people don't know what a driver is, he says

I look shifty. 

A driver is the interaction between the hardware and the graphical interface, he tells me. 

I like to think I'm a geek but I'm never going to have access to all the information that is in his head. I'll learn to be happy with what I have. 

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(this post submitted without rereads or edits because I like it as it is)