Computer Mania

Yesterday was a bad day. Yesterday, ever single computerised system in our house misbehaved itself. By the end of the day, Andy and I were both convinced we had a gremlin in the system somewhere, a nasty, disease-ridden, germy gremlin that had decided to play havoc with our attempts to get on with doing what we wanted to do because it was a Saturday.

For one, I wanted to do some more preparation for the start of my new job on Monday. But my laptop decided to stop working. I switched it on. It coughed. It spluttered. It gave a minor clunk. And then it stared at me, blank-faced and defiant as if to say 'Ha! You know your life's work, all the writing you've done on me in the last year and a half, INCLUDING all the prep for school? Well, I've got it trapped and I'm not giving up, no never, ever, not a chance ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!' It was like it knew I am the world's worst for saving stuff regularly on a memory stick.

And then Andy appeared from where he'd been working upstairs on his computer.
He said, 'My computer is playing up.'
'So is mine,' I said, giving the dead laptop a rattle. 'It's expired.'
Andy spent some time poking my laptop about. He took bits off the back, removed a fairly substantial amount of fluff and cat hair, he bashed buttons, and turned it on/off/on/off/on/off/on/off/on/off etc etc ad infinitum

Still nothing.

'My i-pod is refusing to work, too,' said Andy, morosely, as he sat in a defeated heap on the living room floor. He got up and returned to his study to have another go at getting his computer and his i-pod to co-operate.
'I'll pop back down and see if I can surprise your laptop into working,' he said.

Unable to access the documents on my laptop, I resorted to using my mini netbook. Work still had to be done. I thought, I'll put on the DVD of 'Jam and Jerusalem' I got for Christmas to cheer me up whilst I work. So I popped it in the X-Box (our DVD player gave up the ghost months ago), and the X-Box refused to play, too. Well, it played, but not properly. It was doing bizarre things and clearly had no intention of co-operating with my DVD.

Andy re-appeared and swore at the X-Box until it eventually did as it was told. He then tried to take my laptop by surprise but it still wasn't going to work.

I tried to start work on a document using Microsoft Office. Mini netbook wouldn't let me do it unless I inputted the '25 character access code.'

It took us ages to locate the code, which pitched up on a sticker stuck to the bottom of the netbook. We input the access code. The netbook refused to accept it. Eight times. We gave up.

And this is why I tend to hate computers and love the simpler form of pen and paper. It's a bit like cars and electric windows. We had a Fiat whose electric window would, on occasion, go down and then refuse to go up again. This usually happened in the middle of the night/ a cold snap/ a monsoon/ during a full moon when the risk of werewolf attack is at its greatest.

I never had that sort of trouble with the wind up/ wind down handles on my old 1976 Mini.

Technology isn't always necessarily better. Nor life enhancing.