How to Drive Me Mad
I hate it when electronic things don't work.
No, not like "it bugs me." Not like "I really wish this would work."
I mean bug-eyed, swearing, ranting, raving, sobbing "I hate this."
I'm not really sure why electronic failure bothers me so much. I know that my computer is just a machine. I know that it doesn't have a brain, that it isn't *really* out to get me. I know that the problems - no matter how undiagnosable they are or how random they seem - really get down to the levels of 1s and 0s. I used to write programs; I understand all this.
Nevertheless, one sure-fire way to drive me mad is to break my computer.
I (read: "Mark") recently installed a home access system, so that I can log on to my day-job employer's super-secret confidential network from home. We have a tangled complexity of computers in our house - Windows and Mac, laptop and desktop - and now one of them is on my office system and all the others are "guests" of that system.
At first, my wireless desktop didn't work because the wireless connector that I use was too old to support the proper level of encryption. We replaced it with a USB wireless connector, which we found out was broken after three weeks of use. (Kudos to Circuit City, which accepted the return - with receipt but without box - without question.) We replaced the USB wireless connector with a card. We grappled with electronic interference. Each of these stages was accompanied by my most unreasonable frustration - full-fledged "I'm going to go live in a cabin in Montana and live off the land with no electricity or running water" frustration.
As of this morning, I had connectivity, but I couldn't get out to the Internet for longer than about 60 seconds. When I called my firm's Help Desk, the nice Help Desk Man walked me through his trouble-shooting sheet. After a dozen yeses and nos, we determined that it was my cordless phone causing the problem. The cordless phone in my kitchen, a floor away, not sending or receiving calls even though my computer was phasing in or out.
The phone is now unplugged. Connectivity is restored.
And I got through the entire conversation this morning without melting down like an overtired toddler who has just crashed from a surfeit of Christmas cookies.
Mindy, not at all certain that she loves this everchanging technological world in which we live in...
No, not like "it bugs me." Not like "I really wish this would work."
I mean bug-eyed, swearing, ranting, raving, sobbing "I hate this."
I'm not really sure why electronic failure bothers me so much. I know that my computer is just a machine. I know that it doesn't have a brain, that it isn't *really* out to get me. I know that the problems - no matter how undiagnosable they are or how random they seem - really get down to the levels of 1s and 0s. I used to write programs; I understand all this.
Nevertheless, one sure-fire way to drive me mad is to break my computer.
I (read: "Mark") recently installed a home access system, so that I can log on to my day-job employer's super-secret confidential network from home. We have a tangled complexity of computers in our house - Windows and Mac, laptop and desktop - and now one of them is on my office system and all the others are "guests" of that system.
At first, my wireless desktop didn't work because the wireless connector that I use was too old to support the proper level of encryption. We replaced it with a USB wireless connector, which we found out was broken after three weeks of use. (Kudos to Circuit City, which accepted the return - with receipt but without box - without question.) We replaced the USB wireless connector with a card. We grappled with electronic interference. Each of these stages was accompanied by my most unreasonable frustration - full-fledged "I'm going to go live in a cabin in Montana and live off the land with no electricity or running water" frustration.
As of this morning, I had connectivity, but I couldn't get out to the Internet for longer than about 60 seconds. When I called my firm's Help Desk, the nice Help Desk Man walked me through his trouble-shooting sheet. After a dozen yeses and nos, we determined that it was my cordless phone causing the problem. The cordless phone in my kitchen, a floor away, not sending or receiving calls even though my computer was phasing in or out.
The phone is now unplugged. Connectivity is restored.
And I got through the entire conversation this morning without melting down like an overtired toddler who has just crashed from a surfeit of Christmas cookies.
Mindy, not at all certain that she loves this everchanging technological world in which we live in...
Therefore, I feel your pain
Congratulations on maintaining your sanity.
So far they're not getting it when I ask them to reset the transmitters. Looks like I'll have to start turning their bedroom lights on at 3 a.m. every day to get my point across. (I should add that I have vaulted ceilings since I'm on the second floor, so it's a gazillion times easier for them to change theirs than for me to change mine since you have to take down the fan and get into its base)
People are slowly waking up to the fact that technology doesn't have to crash, and people *will* buy technology that just works. The same thing happened to Detroit, when people found out that Hondas just work and everyone stopped buying Buicks.