We've all been there, haven't we? You'll be in the middle of an important project and your laptop goes berserk, rendering you helpless in this technological world. If you are lucky, you can recover your mechanical beast, and if you are luckier, your work was on auto-save.
We've all lost precious photos, documents, or other files to the black void of computer death. It's always excruciating. If you are like me, you remain salty about it for years. Salty enough that you remember the date and time that it happened and still curse under your breath about it. Yeah, I am a champion grudge holder.
My beast is old. It is well past its prime in terms of functionality. Granted, it was a lemon right out of the box. Since day one, I have had issues with it freezing up or going wonky just for the sake of being my Achilles heel. We had to replace the hard drive just a couple of years into ownership. I could understand if I was an avid porn-surfer, dark web voyeur, or even a complete ignoramus regarding the world wide web. Alas, I am not any of those things. I even know how to clear my cache, do restore points, and general maintenance. I am just unlucky I suppose.
It's my gift, you know.
I can't decide if I either wreak havoc on electronics with all my magnetism and sparkling personality, or if I am in tune with the damaged; gravitating towards those inanimate objects that whisper desperately from their unopened boxes to "pick them," that I should bring them home. Like the runt of the litter or the "it's so ugly, it's cute" tchochke that will inevitably gather dust on the shelf while I sit with buyer's remorse.
But is it really only those possibilities?
I could go all dystopian fiction and consider the possibility that Big Brother is stress interviewing me for their selection process.
Or I could go science fiction and muse about the possibility that small aliens live behind my screen and this is their version of an anal probe.
I could even go gothic turn-of-the-century and believe that my computer is riddled with ghosts and seek a prescription for cocaine for the vapors.
I think I am just slower than the speed of advancement. And I, like most humans, am somewhat resistant to change. Well, not change so much for me. It's more of not wanting to stop to remedy the situation because I am an impatient bitch that hates to be interrupted while working. As if I could somehow magically transition to new a workstation without the pains of transferring files and backups in between.
What I certainly loathe is that I literally have no control over massive OS updates that will force themselves upon you if you wait to long to initiate the process. I am impotent in my frustration and rage because there are no other choices.
I must simply sit and wait while an algorithm somewhere in the world decides my fate.
I have to relinquish my autonomy to a faceless string of code that speaks to me in human tongue.
That thought alone is horrifying.
