Note
I’m dead tired, and it’s late, but I wanted to ask a question: what is it about me that makes machines lose their minds?
And it’s all machines, not just the computer. I managed to break not one but four copy machines in the space of about two hours one day, and neither I nor anybody else knows what I did.
Over the last week or so I’ve been breaking my computer, so that eventually the damned thing just would not turn on the monitor no matter what I did.
But I had good friends over who do computer, and when they were here, it behaved perfectly.
Then they took it away to look at it and gave me this loaner thing, which is actually a laptop hooked up to my monitor and keyboard, so it feels like the usual thing and I don’t have to swear at the laptop keyboard, which I don’t like much.
Except when I started working on it, everything was fine except–it wouldn’t backspace or delete. ANYTHING. On AOL, on Open Office, on the blog.
I sent an e-mail to Richard to ask about it, and he asked if the laptop keyboard would backspace and delete, and it would.
And then, by accident, I found that now that I’d done that, the regular keyboard backspace and delete would work, too.
Honestly, the machines just hate me.
Or something.
And you don’t want me to get near your car.
5 Responses to 'Note'
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Are you sure you are not a theoretical physicist? Some of them were famous for that effect. It was clained that experiments would stop working as soon as they walked in the door!
jd
13 Sep 10 at 7:16 pm
In my mind, I believe there are subtle differences in human behavior which cause categories of machinery to malfunction time and again for the same individuals.
In my heart, I’m inclined to think certain people give off bad vibrations. I have a long and unhappy relationship with combination locks, for instance.
Just remember: don’t anthropomorphize inanimate objects. They really hate that.
robert_piepenbrink
13 Sep 10 at 7:47 pm
There are people who experience street lights going out when they walk near them. The lights come on again when the person gets far enough away.
This happens to a friend of mine in NH, She says computers and copiers malfunction when she gets too near them too.
dottc
13 Sep 10 at 8:45 pm
You could have a stove that decided to accompany its operation with alarming noises, sparks and smoke so that I’m afraid to use it until I get someone to look at it. And then you could come to work and find that the multi-year construction project almost next to your office has reached a point at which it is apparently necessary to make loud rhythmic thumping noises that start and stop at unpredictable intervals. Maybe what they’re doing is the construction equivalent of kicking a machine to get it working properly!
Cheryl
14 Sep 10 at 6:15 am
I have a friend who swears he must have an electromagnetic field around himself like a shark that causes things to fail just for him!
Cathy
CAFiorello
14 Sep 10 at 12:06 pm