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Sunday, November 9, 2008

Computers are meant to torment me.

I moderate a message board. It is a job. An unpaid job. Sometimes I love it. Sometimes I loathe it. The election has made me often have feelings of the later.

Well, the election is over, but still the discussions go on.

We have an Election thread going on. I have stepped in twice to remind our members that the debate is not to get personal, yada yada.

Well, low and behold, someone posted that post. You know. The one that had me looking at my screen yelling "No. No. No!! Do you all hate me? Do you want to give me a heart attack at a tender young age?"

Okay. Maybe the tender young age part was a bit of an over or under statement, but non the less, I have to wonder why people post these things, and if they never consider what the moderators must go through by ways of gnashing teeth and blood pressure issues when they do so.

Well, I knew I had to jump into action immediately. I went to delete the post, and in another window, email the poster about why I had to remove it. As I clicked delete, my computer froze momentarily. I panicked. It took about 20 seconds, and the computer came back. Twenty seconds is more than enough to cause a riot, and i know that. I hit delete. It deleted.

So, I replied to the thread, in order to let everyone know that we will no longer be discussing this particular issue. The computer froze. My panic doubled. It took another 20 seconds to get the computer back.

I started my email to the member who had posted the item meant to cause me harm. The computer decided at that time that each key stroke would take a few second to appear. Each time I hit enter to move to another line, it was another 20 seconds.

I couldn't even check the board to see if the rioting had begun. It would have caused the computer to checkout completely. I had to be nice to it. I had to beg and plead with it. The computer knew it had me over a barrel.

It took nearly 9 minutes to get the entire thing sorted out, and have everyone involved in the process email, explained to, and all the other loose ends, hopefully tied up. Those nine minutes probably took 5 years off my life. Of course, had it gone to 10 minutes, I would have would up in a full panic attack on my way to the E.R. with not only 5 years of my life but a bill for at least $1,000 for the less than 2 mile ride to the hospital.

I think computers are smarter than we give them credit for. Some artificial intelligence is certainly to be found with in mine. How else could it have know to have problems at just the moment I was the most vulnerable?

So, I could certainly forgo all computers, and move back to the much safer pen and paper age. I could also go shopping for a new family computer and hope for one that hasn't developed such an intelligence yet.

However, I think I will try to work my way into a new laptop for myself as a Christmas gift this year, give my husband and kids the current possessed computer, and form a new, loving relationship with the new computer. I will promise to dust it often, and never eat or drink while I am using it, if only it will promise never to fail me at such a scary time again. Ok. I will also promise to give it anything it wants, because I'm sure that it, too, will soon realize that it really has me over a barrel, and can do anything it wants. The computer will just be waiting for the moment that someone else posts something that is bound to cause some sort of all out online war, and the moment it does, even my new love will freeze on me, as a reminder that it always has the power, and it would like a little appreciation for all of its work, and maybe some new memory while I am at it.

1 comments:

*Tanyetta* said...

I honestly believe people would NEVER say half the crap they say on boards to the person they're starting crap with in real life.

I hate when my computer freezes up too!

Great blog.

Please, update your feeds so I can stay updated on new posts ;)

and yes, you can link to any blog I have.;)