House of Dysfunctional Electronics

Although this is Wednesday's post, I did not post this post on Wednesday, despite what the timestamp says - I had to post this, Wednesday's post, on Thursday, and back-date it to Wednesday.

I was not able to post Wednesday's post on Wednesday because my computer would not let me on line yesterday. Although it worked briefly in the early evening, it required a rebooting - something it now seems to need a couple of times a day - and after shutting down, would not start back up. Annoyingly, it lapsed into "scan disk" mode, and kept teasing me by allowing the blue "percent complete" bar to get tantalizingly close to the far right, only to start over again, again and again and again. Then, when I finally had it with that game and clicked the "Stop" button, it began the slowest startup in the history of computing, and I'm going all the way back to the time it took Confucius to string the beads on his first abacus!

Anyway, I eventually got this aging 'puter to start, but once operating, it couldn't find whatever it is it had to find to let MS Explorer take me on line. The modem lights all looked like the connection was all right, but no access.

I finally gave up and went and read for a while - probably a better use of my time, anyway. But in any event, the computer started up fine today (Thursday), allowing me to post this and "tomorrow's" blog entries.

Anyhow, the computer isn't the only electronic appliance not working around here. Come, tour my home with me, and let me point out all of the dysfunctional electronics around here.

See that stereo system over in the corner of the living room? Hear those fine, high-fidelity sounds? Well, you're only hearing one channel, played in mono, because the left channel burned out. Four speakers - only one of them playing.

(It is interesting to note, though, that it sounds better to me now that I've moved it to that corner. Nothing to do with acoustics or performance, but the system looks better over there, and the room looks better re-arranged with the stereo in the corner and the desk formerly in the corner now in the den, and for some reason this improvement in appearance actually makes the stereo sound better to me. Go figure.)

Anyway, let's continue the tour into the den, shall we? Yes, the desk does look nice in that corner, but see over there? That pile of cables, DVD player, cable and converter box lying on the floor? There used to be a television under it, but it went on the blink two weekends ago and has been in the shop since last Wednesday. Yes, my friends, I went the whole Labor Day weekend - including the first Saturday of the college football season - without t.v. And the shop has been incommunicado; no prediction on when they'll get around to fixing it.

So, then, we have a computer that's on its last dying breath, a stereo that's deaf in one ear, and a television in the shop. I haven't had a run this bad since the last week in December 1999, when my monitor, my microwave and my cell phone all went out within a few days of each other, leaving me wondering if all the anxiety about the Y2K bug wasn't coming true after all.

So, thanks for taking the tour of Shokai's House of Dysfunctional Electronics. Please be sure to pick up your souvenir calculator/alarm clock on the way out - guaranteed not to do basic math or tell time or your tour fee will be gladly refunded.

Buh-bye!