Wednesday 17 February 2010

Technology: The love/hate relationship

Today was the day. I was going to prove to him that it wasn't me. I had arrived early for my tutorial in Educational Computing to ensure there weren't many around. I knew my lecturer would be in the computer room. I dropped to the floor and quietly did the army ground crawl into the room.

"Hello Kerin," my lecturer said, without looking up from the cumbersome computer screen (it was 1992).

"How did you know it was me?" I asked, knowing he had not seen me. He was up the back of the room with lots of desks and computers blocking his view.

"The screen went funny!"

That my friends was my introduction to computing. If anything could go wrong it would go wrong and it would be on my computer.

Previously I worked for a Bank in the back office inputting data. Dr Watson (for those who know microsoft errors) became a fixture in my day to day work. The computers were so old that to log out and back in again and open all the programs meant a good 25 minutes of doing nothing. This was not good when Dr Watson visited between 3-5 times a day.

Eventually we got new computers (second had from head office) and a new system. Gone was Dr Watson but hello Blue Screen of Death (imagine that being said in a deep base voice that echos). That is what IT called it anyway. In two years my computer had to be rebuilt 3 times.

Now I work for a different company but we use the same software. I am blaming the software and not me. Yesterday I logged on and within half an hour : Blue Screen of Death (deep base voice yadda yadda). To cut a long story short my computer is still not fixed. I was lucky to use someone else's yesterday afternoon because there are no spares. I am able to get onto my own today but it has crashed a couple of times.

IT has likened my computer to an episode of House: you investigate, think you found the problem, run the fix, and hey presto another issue possibly caused by the fix or because it just doesn't like Dr House.

So here I am knowing full well it can crash at any moment. I which case you will not get to read this post but I am sure you will hear about it on the news when I throw the computer out the window and it lands on car driving by causing a massive pileup and a blocked road for hours, so here goes, fingers crossed, publish post.

1 comment:

BealcA's Pad said...

I loved it, glad that I am not the only one who has problems with the wonders of microsoft software and computers.

I wish that I could remember to write stuff like that, instead of pulling my hair or what hair I still have or had.

I sent your blog site to a friend down the had from me, hope that it opens for her.

This morn' I posted on mine, but pictures wouldn't go in, and then I tried again, and it kept telling me that there wasn't such a thing as BealcA;s Pad. I later had to go from my gmail.com where I have my sites and blog posted on each email that goes out from that one, and then it worked again.

Take care sweet gal and love yah a lot and MUM.