My lovely new computer, an HP Pavilion model, just like my creaky old one that I had been forced to undergo a total System Restore with, and then reconfigure and set up anew, losing all my data in the process, appears to be somewhat less than lovely.  For some inexplicable reason, other than to conclude that it was inoperable right out of the factory gate, the time element never worked properly.  I would set it, and re-set it.  To little avail.

I'd be startled to note that when it was actually midnight, Eastern Standard Time; Canada-US, it would register 5:00 am.  The clock was racing, by not-too-minute increments.  At my age of 75, I feel time is racing in real-time, in my life, I don't really need my computer emulating that.  And it impacted, of course, other parts of the system, so I'd get wonky posting times in my Twitter and Blog accounts.

I just didn't want to give up on it.  So I kept struggling to see if I could find the source of the problem.  Trying out a number of manoeuvres, one of which I was certain would do the trick and tame the racing timer. But it didn't. 

And then, the very day that my fourteen-day window within the return policy for Office Depot/Staples where we bought the computer ran out, the keyboard too began behaving peculiarly.  While I was keyboarding it would suddenly slide over from Canadian English/US to Canadian French.  I desperately attempted to compensate, after checking to see that the settings hadn't changed themselves; they hadn't, but the keyboard strokes just weren't reflected on the 'page' I was writing on.

With huge reluctance, bearing in mind the work it had taken to turn a tabula rasa into a computing device that reflected my needs and priorities, I decided it would have to be returned.  At two in the morning I rushed out of bed to re-check the sale date, and sure enough, the two-week window had passed. 

I remonstrated with myself the following day; so what if I had to manually change the clock every morning?  But then, doing that little chore didn't solve anything because the thing would simply continue racing, insouciantly forwarding itself five minutes each half-hour, steadily progressing in time as the day wore on.

Procrastination took us into early evening.  While having our dinner-time peach-crisp dessert I noted the time on the breakfast room clock: 8:15; running late this evening.  Then took my husband by surprise, remarking we'd better hurry if we meant to get to the neighbourood Staples sufficiently before closing time at 9:00 to explain my little dilemma.

The store manager quietly remarked on the rhino-sized reality that sat complacently between us: expiration of the store warranty for replacement.  But, he said, he would have his senior technician have a quick look at it.  That technician informed me later that though he has been in the business since 1982 he's never seen a computer clock behave like this one did. 

Lucky me, I'm so exceptional.