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ExamForce :: Article Archive :: Newsletter Article
 The Cert Times: IT Edition Article Archive
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| Techno Karma (B1N@RY N@T10N (A.J. Axline)) |
As Nostradamus said on his death bed: I should have seen it coming.
Really, I should have. Things had been going so well for so long, I should have at least suspected that my techno karma was approaching a state of low tide. The fact is, you get complacent when everything is working properly. When all of your gear is ticking along without a hitch, you come to, well, expect it.
(Fool! Fool am I!)
It started with my MP3 players. Yes, players plural. I had a Creative Nomad MuVo 128 MB flash player that I bought back in the day when they were expensive; I also had an Ultra 8-in-1 128 MB flash player that can read SD memory cards.
The Creative player went first. There was no warning, no deterioration of performance, no sparks, no damp cough or night sweats. It just gacked one afternoon. I tinkered with it for about an hour, then went to Creative's support site and followed their recovery process for another hour.
Nothing. Nada. Zip. My desktop and laptop have forsaken my Nomad MuVo. Like Neil Diamond in the Jazz Singer, it is dead to them.
Naturally, I was disappointed. I'd only owned my MuVo for 2-3 years, and although its small capacity had prompted me to pick up the Ultra player for longer trips, it had still been a decent workout buddy, or a convenient memory stick whenever I needed to sneakernet some files around.
No longer.
"Oh well," I said to myself, "at least I still have the Ultra player."
The Ultra player died a week later.
I turned on the Ultra player one afternoon, and the cheerful display backlight came on... and nothing else. No friendly display showing me Track #1. No little bars informing me how much battery life I had left. Absolutely nothing other than the eerie glow of the backlight; normally a sign of health, but now, the last dead reflex of an electronic corpse.
Again, I tinkered. Again, I looked for useful information on the vendor's support site. But like the proverbial parrot, my player had ceased to be. It was an ex-player. It was dead, Jim.
(Whoops, mixed my geek dialogue there.)
"I don't know what to make of this," I told Vector over a morning, mourning latte.
"Well, just a shot in the dark, but I suspect that God hates you," Vector said. Then he started laughing. He was still laughing when I got up from my chair and walked out ten minutes later. Still laughing, tears streaming from his eyes, latte foam frothing in the corners of his mouth, his hands twitching spasmodically like hyperactive teacup poodles. Man, I hope they threw him out of the Starbucks.
Two days after the death of the Ultra player, I finished installing a new 200 GB Western Digital hard drive into an external USB 2.0 sleeve, and plugged it into my desktop. It worked for about ninety seconds, and then stopped in mid-data transfer, spun down, coughed blood all over my desk, and expired.
(1) "Well, darn!" I said.
About a week after that incident, my iRock Beamit wireless FM transmitter that I used to play MP3s in my vehicle (a task that has warily been assigned to my Pocket PC, since I am now player-less) began to act up. Normally crystal clear, the reception through my van's stereo system began to emulate Neil Armstrong spinning tracks from the moon.
(2) "Well, darn!" I said.
(3) "Darn, darn, darn!" I said.
There were many other incidents, too many to detail here. It reached the point that whenever I was about to use an electronic device, Vector would ask me to wait, run to the cafeteria, microwave a bag of popcorn, run back, and situate himself in a comfortable chair offering a clear view of my desk.
"Okay, go," he'd say.
(4) "Please leave my office," I'd respond.
After several weeks of suffering, thankfully, the rate of device meltdown seems to be tapering off. My Pocket PC has finally stopped its mournful sobbing while syncing with my desktop PC. My laptop is no longer covered in pustulent sores and boils, and has discontinued violating itself with crucifixes. And, most thankfully, my digital camera has stopped replacing all of my snapshots with nude pictures of Rosie O'Donnell.
I'm hoping that my techno karma has finally reached a state of equilibrium, and that I can resume a regular schedule of gadget replacement.
Now, let me just save this month's column...
.....
(5) "Well, darn!"
A.J. Axline
(1) Profanity replaced by request of the editor.
(2) Profanity replaced by request of the editor.
(3) Profanity replaced by request of the editor.
(4) Profanity replaced by request of the editor.
(5) Profanity replaced by request of the editor.
Send all comments to: AJAxline@CertTalk.com
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Posted by
nam on 28/03/2006 08:47 |
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