Tuesday, July 06, 2004
The Joy of ComputingI finally gave in, and took my car to the repair shop. It's become increasingly reluctant to start in hot weather and today it refused altogether. As I biked home from the shop, the thought suddenly struck me that most people wouldn't have put up with this kind of problem for a whole year.
I reflected on that as I considered the car's other "eccentricities": a brake pedal that won't come back up on its own without a little help; an ignition switch so well broken-in that I can remove the key while the engine is running (I consider this a useful, unplanned feature); gas and temperature gauges that give (at best) approximations of the way things are; a gas filler spout that almost always overflows during fueling; and—worst of all—a radio that sometimes refuses to power up when I start the car. How, I wondered, am I able to put up with all of that?
Then it dawned on me: I use the computer so much, I've come to expect the whole world to be like that. By "like that," I mean full of bugs, scams and spam, full of indignities and absurdities evoking emotions ranging from (depending on mood and situation) amusement to near-murderous rage.
To view some Web pages, I often have to hit "reload" several times before they display properly. With one of my e-mail accounts, I routinely delete twenty or more pieces of spam a day. Every day, I run a program called Ad-Aware to remove all the "spyware" and another called RegClean to correct all the errors in the registry. If I don't restart the computer at least once a day, it stops behaving properly. (You don't even want to know about programming. Trust me.)
Scientists figured out years ago that spending too much time online can hurt you. Studies found a link between computer use and depression, and the debate since has focused on whether already-depressed people seek the computer for escape/relief; or instead, whether folks who use the computer too much become depressed because they neglect their flesh-and-blood, offline relationships.
My guess would be that both are true to some degree, and that a vicious cycle can develop, with the depressed person becoming more and more isolated. But wait a minute—what about the experience of computing itself? Couldn't that be part of the problem? The correlation between anxiety and depression is well documented, and who would deny that the frustration of computing creates anxiety in even the coolest of cats?
The computer is only the most egregious example of the ubiquitous modern phenomenon I like to call "Crap Acceptance." How about the stylie cell phone that gives you a good connection less than half the time? How about the voice-menu labyrinth that refuses to connect you with a human? The traffic jam? The billing error? The repairman who never shows up? We're used to all these things, and many more like them. We're supposed to just accept them all without comment, as if they weren't real problems, as if they weren't driving us to the brink of insanity.
We "computer people" are even more inured to Crap than everyone else is. We're the masters of the restart, the workaround, the perpetually good-natured cynicism that makes the situation vaguely tolerable.
So, more than most, I'm well-equipped to shovel all the Crap modern life sends my way. And that, I realized as I biked into my driveway, is why I didn't mind waiting five minutes for the car to start sometimes.
But when I get the car back, all I have to say is—the radio had better work.
(And stop looking at my stapler.)
Posted by Me at 23:09 link
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Happy Happy, Joy JoyI don't feel much like pontificating on politics or world affairs. This July 4th weekend was just too nice.
Saturday, I took in the local fireworks display with Mom; today I biked in the rain around Salem Lake in Winston-Salem. Biking in the rain on a dirt road should have sucked, but that one seems to be a magic road: even with rain off and on for 3 hours, I didn't see a single puddle. Bravo, Winston-Salem.
My only suggestion for improvement would be a sign explaining basic trail etiquette. One very fit biker, wearing the usual ridiculous spandex uniform, spooked a horse, actually causing it to rear up a little. Another guy almost ran over a 4-year-old girl. And one clown almost crashed into me as he whizzed silently around me (I was starting to veer left to dodge a large root). In each case, a simple "on your left" or other audible signal would have done the trick. I was surprised the horseman didn't have some harsh words for his jerk, and alarmed that the little girl's parents didn't even seem to notice what had almost happened, but I called out "Thanks for the warning!" to my jerk and somehow managed to avoid tacking "poopy pants" onto the end of it (fenders/mudguards are very cool). I guess I'm finally growing up.
Fortunately, the creeps disappeared once the rain started in earnest. The rain did keep me from listening to music (my mp3 player isn't weatherproof), so I thought a lot. Yeah, scary. My favorite idea from today: a garden club called the Aces of Spades. They could have a t-shirt that says "Weed 'em and Reap!" (Hey, I didn't say they were brilliant thoughts, did I?)
In honor of being passed by so many young, clueless jerks with multi-thousand-dollar bikes and cheesy spandex shorts with embarassing mud streaks up the back, I composed a haiku: I just cannot hang
So I don't ride with groups; I—
Ride alone, slowly. Music in my Head- Howlin' Wolf — "Killing Floor"
- Led Zeppelin — "The Lemon Song"
- The Screamin' Lederhosen — "Big House Blues" (a.k.a. the Ren & Stimpy closing theme)
They're all essentially the same song, the last two being based (to put it generously) on the first. Which is more or less the same story with - Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds — "Mbube"
- The Weavers — "Wimoweh"
- The Tokens — "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"
Led Zeppelin settled out of court with Howlin' Wolf in the early '70s, and "Big House Blues" is just different enough that it's probably not technically plagiarism (plus, it's an instrumental, and it never made much money). The saga of "Mbube" continues to this day. It's a fascinating story. Read all about it. (Or just read a brief news article if you'd rather....)
Posted by Me at 23:01 link
|
