Making an upgrade:
Lincoln Loud was used to frustration.
His sisters and their endless demands on his time, Chandler and his cronies messing with him for fun, the decline and disintegration of Ace Savvy's writing across all mediums; all of these things provoked a headache that never quite left before a new one took its place.
More pressingly; he was used to his laptop being little more than a semi functional word processor. Groaning in well earned frustration at the frozen screen he gave up the game save as a lost cause and with two key pressed activated Order Controller- the special program installed in every Operating System to force a program to shut down if need be-
But as he clicked on 'force close' for the game- Order Controller didn't respond. His heart dropped- but surely it couldn't be…
With a trembling finger he clicked again; and Order Controller went white as a ' (non responsive) ' was added to the title of the program.
Order Controller had become the very thing it was meant to destroy.
"Friggin's heck!" Lincoln groaned to Clyde, the other boy munching away at a cafeteria burger. "It wasn't even some big game either- it was Solitaire! Solitaire!"
Clyde nodded in sympathy, the other boy had been complaining about his awful computer for may months now- this was simply the latest incident.
In Loud House new things of any sort was a rare luxury; instead they primarily brought second or third-hand from thrift stores or had Lynn Sr and his more handy-woman inclined progeny reconstruct assorted abandoned appliances from yard sales and sometimes even the sides of the road. Lincoln's Laptop happened to be a hodge-podge of ageing hardware from one such sale- or least the case and screen was. The inside was an obsolete mess with a slow fan- eternally overheating cpu and RAM that seemingly developed new faults like Lynn developed injuries.
That it had been made before Lincoln was born- having been handed down to him when Lori moved out of her 'nerd phase' and switched primarily to her phone- didn't help matters.
"Why don't you ask Lisa to help you?" Clyde suggested. "She can probably fix up anything."
"Well yeah but…" Lincoln shuddered: "she always goes overboard! If I try to get her to help I'll probably end up as her assistant for a week- and my Laptop will end up like some Finklestein's machine with liquid nitrogen cooling and a million other cool things- but it all explode or something after five minutes because she didn't think something through or she used cheap equipment. You know what she's like!"
"Hmmm," Clyde gave him a suspicious, but friendly look. "That sounds a bit suspect to me Mr Loud- but I'll pretend you just don't want her touching your history if you want-"
"Hey!" Lincoln flushed.
"And I'll do you a solid too," Clyde fished out his own laptop- a shiny new model with all the fancy stickers. "See this- my Dad's got me this for my birthday. But, I still have my old laptop at home so if a certain very good friend of mine was in need I might be able to spare them-"
"Really Clyde!?" Lincoln's jumped up and hugged his friend as a vision of himself gleefully playing Solitaire without interruption crossed his mind- maybe even write a fanfic with minimal freezing! "Oh thank you- you don't know what this means to me-"
Clyde pointedly pushed Lincoln back by an arms length; "actually I do- and I've gotta say old chum; I think that you're just the kind of friend who I'd give my precious slightly outdated hardware- and you know why?"
Lincoln looked at him with wide, grateful eyes. "We've been friends for years?"
Clyde smiled, "well yes my dear dear Mr Loud; but also because I know you're just the kind of friend who would help another friend get something they couldn't get."
Clyde could go suck an egg.
But as much as Lincoln had hated the suggested 'mutually beneficial arrangement' that the other boy had suggested; it had only taken a day of frustrating slowness stopping him from even updating his fanfic (six people were following it- one or two of them even gave regular reviews with each update!) for him to reconsider. Then Lori's latest Drama Queen moment over one of Leni's sandals (that looked more or less the same as the pair she always wore, so Lincoln was pretty sure Lori was just being petty again) weakened his resolve further.
Now he sat there with the spoils of his scheme; Clyde's old laptop next to his own and Lori sans one of her old undies. The boy did feel a little dirty since he did kind of completely steal one of his sisters clothes so he could get something for himself; but it was one of her plain old ones that he'd fished out from the clean washing so it wasn't like she would really miss them.
Clyde's expression as he had held the plain white, clearly slightly worn out undies would haunt his nightmares though.
But visions of guilt and distress aside; Lincoln Loud had himself a new, functional computer! Heck, it was probably the most modern one (except for whatever Lisa had obviously) in the house.
But before he could really use it; he needed to transfer his files. Fortunately, Clyde had been able to help with that too:
"It's called cloning your hard drive," Clyde explained. "You use a special program to analyse your old hard drive, then it basically makes a full copy of it which you can use with the new computer to overwrite the new one."
"Wow," Lincoln gasped; that was way better than just copy and pasting his old files and re-installing all his programs (he mostly just happy about his Vapour platform games and their saves though)! "That's amazing; how do you do it?"
"Well…."
Lincoln booted up his own Laptop, input his password and went off to read a comic for ten minutes. When he popped over again, Doors had booted up properly and he was able to install Clyde's recommended program; or at least start to.
It was a slow process.
After finishing his dinner, he popped back to see that the program had finished installing and was ready to be used.
"You'll need this," Clyde handed him a slightly bulky USB stick. "It's a big drive so space shouldn't be an issue, set the program to send the disc image- that's a technical term for a special kind of file, not a picture like a jpg- to this. It might take a while but as long as you leave your computer alone then it shouldn't need more than an hour or two."
It took more than an hour or two.
Lincoln's laptop needed to be replaced because it was slow after all; it may have been decent before he was born, but even if the hardware had been perfectly preserved (which it certainly had not been) the OS and modern software was far too much for the technological generation it had come from. Thus; the recording only reached ten percent before a sleepy and well past his bedtime Lincoln reluctantly switched the power settings to quickly turn off the screen but not go to sleep.
It did reach completion by morning though; but only after Lincoln finished his shower and very nearly had to head out to school.
"Once the disc image is done, you boot up my old laptop and use the same program on there to install it to the blank partition I made-"
"Partition?"
"It's when you divide up a computer into multiple chunks, that way you can have multiple OS's on one machine."
He got the concept, but more advanced computer stuff like that was a bit out of his reach. But all he had to do was copy the image to the empty partition rather than one he was using- Clyde said it wouldn't let him do that anyway so it shouldn't be a problem.
Oh well, Lincoln quickly brought up the program and found the screen that he had used to make the disc image and-
"LINCOLN LOUD!" Lori's voice interrupted his train of thought. "GET YOUR BUTT DOWN HERE OR YOU'RE WALKING!"
He quickly scrambled, clicking the same buttons as before and scampered down before Lori made good on her threat.
"Yeah that was your mistake," Clyde bluntly replied through the walkie-talkie.
Clyde's laptop remain unaffected, both partitions as before while the 'disc image' on the USB stick seemed to have shrunk.
"So I just… made another disc image?" Lincoln sighed. "Well is there any reason I can't do the same thing again?"
"Sure, just remember when you go and try to rewrite my old laptop again; make sure that the destination is the empty partition and the source is the image from the USB."
It took another night to make the image again from Lincoln's old computer, but this time he was sure to take his shower a bit quicker than normal so he would have enough time to check the 'source' and 'destination' was right. Thus it was that the slightly damp boy gleefully clicked the button that would finally transfer his files-
THIS OPERATION CANNOT BE COMPLETED IN THIS STATE- REBOOT?
Lincoln groaned in frustration, but quickly clicked 'yes' and let the laptop reboot- what did he have to lose?
Rather than going onto the usual Doors OS the screen instead showed a new interface, a lot like the one the disc imaging program used. But this one was larger and seemed to be a little OS unto itself.
It also didn't respond to the Laptop's tracking pad- the mouse was nowhere to be found on screen. Groaning again Lincoln started pressing buttons to see if he could get a response- which he did after a bit. It turned out using the tab and arrow keys let him access some of the menus-
"Lincoln!" Rita Loud's voice shook him from his thoughts- and he looked to see her standing in his open room door. "Lori left five minutes ago! Why are you still here!?"
One long walk followed by a longer day at school found the boy pushing in the USB cable of Clyde's mouse into the new laptop with some bitterness. Sure; Clyde had let him borrow the mouse but this was getting convoluted- if he'd known that this would be so difficult he probably would have just copied his important files to his own USB and transferred them to the new Laptop like a normal person.
But that was in the past now- he'd put all this effort in so he might as well get to it!
Booting up the Laptop he made his way to the screen from before and clicked around with the mouse to make sure that he could use it- which he could so that was nice. Now according to Clyde it was all a matter of finding his image on the USB stick
All a matter of finding his image on the USB stick…
Why couldn't he find the image?
He clicked through the screen; there was a special section where he could look through the computers existing folders and drives (including USB sticks) for the file; but it wasn't in the stick!
He looked at the stick- it was in properly and seemed to be registering if it showed up on the screen- but the file wasn't there.
He pulled it out briefly to see if the file had somehow disappeared- but even when he checked on his old laptop the file was fine in the stick on that Laptop.
But when he plugged it into the new computer again- the screen still didn't show the image file-
"Lincoln?" His mother's voice distracted him, and he spotted her looking at him with a suspicious expression. "Why have you had two laptops for the past few days?"
"Okay that's on me," Clyde admitted across the walkie-talkie. "I should have remembered about the other program."
Lincoln sat illuminated only by the light of the sole remaining laptop in his room- his old one having been claimed by Mom since he had a new one. She let him backup his important folders on Clyde's USB stick in case things went wrong before she reprogrammed it- since she was giving it to either Lucy or the twins and didn't want them exposed to 'whatever he might have on there'.
What exactly she thought he had on there that would hurt the spooky Lucy, conniving Lola or disgusting Lana was another question.
"Other program?" Lincoln sighed, wiping his tired eyes. "What other program Clyde- we've been at this for literal days now!"
"It's fine, it's fine," Clyde assured. "Just go to this site and download this program…"
It only took five minutes- since Clyde's laptop was leagues his old one. The new program loaded up fast too, revealing a small and simple interface.
"Okay; what this does is make a file that-"
"Will this make this work?"
"Yes-"
"Then I don't care." Lincoln was done with this nonsense. "What buttons do I press to make it work?"
"… Yeah I get that; just find the image file in the input section, select the USB stick you're going to put this file in and click 'begin'."
Lincoln did the first part easily enough, and the second was as simple as the first- he only had one USB stick to put it in anyway. But when he clicked 'start'…
DELETING PARTITIONS
"Clyde?"
"Yeah?"
"Was there a partition on your USB before you gave it to me?"
Lincoln waited a full five seconds for Clyde's to reply.
The other boy's voice was as dour as he had feared. "… Which USB stick did you use for this new file?"
It turned out that Clyde's program worked by deleting whatever was previously on the USB stick it was using. For whatever reason; it worked by making some kind of file that allowed the other program to 'see' a Disc Image file if it was on a USB stick, but only if it was that Image file it was made for.
Clyde had just assume that Lincoln was using a separate one, but Lincoln had already had a perfectly good one in the one that Clyde had lent him with plenty of space left over on it. Thus he had just used that one- and the error of miscommunication and assumption had resulted in the sudden corruption of the stick as Lincoln quickly forced the program to stop all too late.
The Stick was still theoretically recoverable with a special formatting- but the data was lost forever.
It was at this point that Lincoln remembered that he had been able to scroll through the files already in the main program. Furthermore the partition that the OS was using still had enough space for his Disc Image file, even after he had split it to allow for the planned copying to occur.
If he had just transferred the image to the main OS, then he would have never needed Clyde's second program anyway.
"Dang dude I'm sorry…" Clyde sighed.
"Oh It's fine Clyde," Lincoln giggled, his frustration having peaked into that weird semi-hysterical state only those who have utterly invalidated themselves reach. "Hey- you wanna hear something else that's funny?"
"… Lincoln your voice sounds a bit like The Jackal-"
"Mom already reprogrammed my old computer!" He laughed, "I can't try again! I can't even copy my old folders like a normal person! I have to start from scratch anyway!"
He felt more giggles bubbling out and… really? Why not just let them fly free!
"Heh heh ha ha HA HA! HA!" He let himself roll back on the bed with twisted grin coming across his face. "Don't you see Clyde- the joke's on ME!"
"I think I'll just talk to you tomorrow instead." Clyde sounded worried for some reason.
"My fanfics were due an update yesterday- and all my planning and content is gone!" Lincoln laughed again. "I did this to get them out quicker!"
"I'm sorry?" Clyde sounded like he was trying to placate him- but something new occurred to the white haired boy that only served as the absolute cherry on top!
"AHHH! HAHAHAHaha he he heh heee!" Lincoln rocked forward, "and my Dad used to be a computer techie! HAHAHA! I COULD HAVE JUST ASKED HIM! HAHAHA!"
"… Try to get some sleep Lincoln."
The walkie-talkie went dead as Lincoln rambled on anyway- babbling increasingly incoherent nonsense and brokenly laugh-crying to himself.
A/N:
And that dear readers is a semi-coherent ramble inspired by my own frustrations across the past few weeks; and it explains why it will probably take a week or two before my other fanfics are updated.
While I didn't steal any underwear, and the other details were obviously not the same the frustrations of transferring files between computers was very much something that has plagued me for the past few days for no tangible success.
This rant by fanfic was produced by a frustrated and sleep deprived mind; so if you see any errors or the plot/details are noticeably off in any way then please let me know.
