Technology Hates Me

So I've decided that all of technology has conspired to make my life a nightmare. It seems like all the electronic devices I come into contact with have "quirks" that make things complicated.

Example 1: My Previous Phone
This phone was fine for most of its short life. But for the last two or three months of my life, it decided not to interact with me anymore. Its screen would periodically flicker on and off, and the backlight would sometimes become completely dark. It became progressively worse until the day I moved back home from college. It then decided it no longer wanted to turn on its screen. You see, this is a problem especially with that phone, because it was a touch-dial phone. No screen meant that I had to guess the numbers I was pushing. Reading texts was nearly impossible, and I had to hope I didn't make any spelling errors while texting. Needless to say, I returned that phone (luckily, the warranty was still active).

Example 2: My Current Phone
The phone I have (for now) is, I'm quite sure, demon-possessed. Basically, what it will do is press its own touch-screen buttons. This means that it will open menus at random, send premature texts, and try to delete all my texts without my permission. There was one instance where I was trying to respond to a text, and the demon caused me to send three messages that read "-a". After that, it erased a large portion of past texts. I expect to one day receive a text from myself that will read, "lol u r as good as dead. watch ur back." That phone is basically a bratty, rebellious teenager. For anyone who was into Pokemon when they were little (don't lie - you know you loved it), it was like a traded Pokemon that wouldn't listen to you if you didn't have the right gym badge. I don't have the right gym badge.

Example 3: My Previous Camera
This was partially my fault. I got it for Christmas and left it in the cold car (hooray!) without thinking. It didn't like that. After that, it decided never to turn on again.

Example 4: My New Camera
This one isn't as bad. When it runs low on battery (as it did while I was in Mexico), it decides when and where it wants to turn on. So, if we were passing a large Gothic church being painted yellow, it was taking a nap. As soon as the church was out of sight, though, it awoke from its nap. It has new batteries now.

Example 5: This Computer (My CU Laptop)
Because I was an early enroll student, I used to have the old CU laptop. Well, when the freshmen moved in last year, I found out I could exchange it for this new one. In my opinion, it was a good trade. It doesn't have many problems - really only one. It periodically will click its own left mouse button and hold it down. (To understand the absurdity, you must realize that I have turned off the touchpad, as I hate all touchpads.) Unfortuanately, it still finds a way to cause me to drag unwanted images around the screen and highlight large sections of random text.

Example 6: The Accounting Office Printer
I work in the CU Accouting Office. They have a receipt printer that looks like it survived the first World War. It sometimes refuses to cooperate. This morning, I discovered it was jammed. This instantly darkened my day, as it is very difficult to realign the printer. This meant that it took many, many tries, too much paper, and a lot of frustration to get it back into place.

Example 7: Every Freaking Alarm In My and My Roommate's Room
My roommate has an iPod dock alarm clock. That means that he awakes to We As Human in the morning... most days. I have a normal alarm clock, and we both have cell phones with alarms. My roommate is also a light sleeper. Nevertheless, one morning (coincidentally, the day my roommate had an important Chemistry exam) the alarms slept through their alarms, apparently. Brad awoke to a phone call from one of his classmates asking him where he was. We discussed this later in the day. Neither of us remembered waking up or turning off the alarms (the radio alarm is extremely loud, mind you). Brad looked at his iPod and discovered that it had cycled through 7-8 very loud songs, though we didn't hear a thing. My alarm, which I specifically remembered setting the night before, had also been silent. I've always hated alarm clocks.

Example 8: The Phone I Owned Before My Previous Phone
This probably belongs back with the other two, but I just remembered it. This issue was mainly caused by use and age. That phone had a couple of buttons (namely the number 5) that wouldn't register when they were pressed. So I had to pound them in, which resulted in a double entry. Phones are stupid.

Example 9: All Lawnmowers
Self-explanatory

Example 10: My Toshiba Gigabeat
Yes, i own an MP3 player. It is not an iPod. In its younger rebellious years, it would turn its own sound to the maximum volume... while I was wearing the headphones. That was annoying, but I fixed the issue and it no longer troubles me anymore. It's actually one of my most reliable pieces of technology.

So there you have it - many (but not all) of my technological woes. Why they target me, I'm not sure. There was this one scholarship essay I wrote about technology. It was some scholarship sponsored bu Samsung, and it asked me to write about my thoughts on the effect of technology in the future. For some unfathomable reason, I decided it would be a good idea to write about our reliance on technology, how it has become a crutch, and the consequences in the future. Needless to say (but I'll say it, anyway), I didn't get that scholarship. In a nutshell, that is my battle with electrical appliances.

One more thing: I decided today that Dr. Crompton has the most delightful accent ever.