I have a new rule when it comes to my mother and tech support: she must make a good-faith effort to fix the problem.  She called me with speaker issues and I asked “did you try to fix it?” she replied “yes, I traced all the cables from the speakers and they’re connected”.  I went to her house, looked at the back of the speaker and saw the power cord was unplugged.  I politely informed my mother and she immediately stormed about the house loudly proclaiming her own foolishness.  Most would consider this bad but I saw progress: A few short months ago she wouldn’t have considered a device not having power a reason for it to not operate.

Parents, they grow up so fast.

We have a printer at work that’s slowly dying.  The manual feed tray is held in place by a rubber mallet wedged in place between the printer and a desk.  It prints like a stuttering autistic person, should one page fail, the whole project starts anew, usually to stop again at roughly the same point.

At first I thought this was the cacophonous swan song of a dying workhorse but there may be a typographic labor movement afoot. I was printing a document today and it jammed, not too odd except for I was printing to a PDF file. I suspect the work printers have combined forces with the print drivers and are unionizing. This wildcat strike that has been masquerading as a device problem is only the first wave. I must break the back of this printer-tariat (good one, eh?) uprising before the fax machine and the plotter jump on board.

I hate needy technology.  My microwave beeps every 60 seconds until you take its contents out. I checked to see how long this would go by setting the microwave for a few seconds and then going to bed and checking it in the morning.  Still going.

Some WordPress plugins are equally insistent being updated every few days.  When an app goes from ver. 1.00.1.00.98 to 1.00.1.00.99 there really shouldn’t be a giant red marquee on the top of the page telling me to get the vital update or my Flickr feed could be viewed by communists.  Unless failing to update will cause nothing less than the distruction of Western Civilization, I don’t care until it at least hits 1.00.1.01.

Something more appropriate would be my car’s parking brake light.  I’ve driven for hundreds of feet with the parking brake on after someone drove it without telling me they activated/engaged it, turfing grass, destroying stone walkways and abbrating woodland creatures without treating me like an idiot.  It lets me look like an idiot, but at least it gives me the option.