Thursday, February 23, 2006

Marauding monsters

I hates my computer
Me thinks that I will sells it
For never does it what I wants
But only what I tells it.

Those wonderful lines were taped to a computer monitor in an office that my dad was working in. My dad owns a computer repair business in Tennessee so he daily deals with machines that refuse to cooperate with the orders given to them. Here in North Carolina I am responsible to the health and maintenance of four computers. Not a great amount, but if you take what I know about computers and stuff it in a thimble you would still have room left over for your toes. I can fix a car. I can fix a stove. I can even fix a stereo or a microwave depending on what is wrong with them. I have even delved into the mysterious inner workings of a VCR. But those things have no ability to think. Computers on the other hand are devious scheming little devices. Deep in side them are nasty little creatures that lurk in such things as hard drives and memory cards and modems and other strange sounding electronic mechanisms. The remain hidden and allow you to feel safe as long as you aren’t doing anything important, but as soon as you start an important project the nasty monsters attack. They assault your motherboard and dance on your CPU, and have wild drunken brawls that corrupt your work and cause you to need surgery for ulcers. They ravage and pillage in a way that the Vikings would be in awe of. Nothing is spared their savagery. They rape and ravage all the information stored in your memory. They juggle the words to your letters and manuscripts and throw them back haphazardly in no particular order. The more important the file the more vicious the attack. Fortunately for us these demonic beings have not discovered fire yet. If they had the keyboard would burst into flames as you neared the end of your work. Not even backup files are safe. There is a stack of floppy discs on my desk that have tiny little pillagers swinging from gossamer threads with their swords and axes hanging from their bodies attacking the information stored on them. There is no stopping these marauders even very mention of them will bring swift action on my writings and will seek to destroy my work before I have time to fini…

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