Catalyst Studios v.3

Technology Hates Me!

Filed under Technology |

Many moons ago, when I was still in short trousers and Dangermouse was still on the TV, my Amiga 600 gave up the ghost an amazing TWO DAYS out of warranty (how did it know?! How did it know?!). In retrospect, I think only the disc drive had failed. But being too young to own a set of screwdrivers, or have the ££££HUGE amount of cash that a floppy drive cost in those days, I had to admit defeat. And probably cry, or something… in a manly way. One of my “friends” suggested that dropping it down the stairs might fix the problem. It didn’t.

Older and wiser (and realising that you never saw Scotty chucking wayward bits of the Enterprise down the stairs to fix them), I acquired an Xbox. Now, the original Xbox was built like a granite walrus. I remember an old Sony warranty, which casually informed me that the policy was void in the event of nuclear war (no word of a lie, this). The Microsoft warranty told you to hide under the Xbox in the event of nuclear war. And it would still work afterwards. BUT. The very day I sold it on eBay, for a not insubstantial sum of money, the bloody thing packed up. I tried everything with it, shaking it, hitting it, dropping it down the stairs. Mike even took it apart for me. He didn’t know how to fix it. Just took it apart. Anyway, the upshot of this was that I had to write a grovellingly apologetic e-mail to the poor bloke who bought it and refund the money in full. Whilst crying, of course, in a manly way.

Anyway, the final insult. A couple of months ago, being the terminally short of cash bloke that I am, I decided to flog my iPod on eBay. Now, you know what’s coming here. I tried to charge it before sending it to the buyer and… nothing. I swore at it, took it apart, threatened it in a way of which Jack Bauer would be proud, etc, etc. One apologetic e-mail later, I was poised to throw the thing down the stairs. But then I realised I couldn’t, because I now live in a flat. So I plugged it in to the dock instead… And it started working again!!!

The thing had broken just long enough so I couldn’t sell it.

And they say technology makes our lives easier. I think we should just chuck it all down the stairs…

Tags: amiga, ebay, ipod, Technology, xbox

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.