More Computer Agony

Angry frilled-neck lizard — Stock Photo

I know exactly how he feels!

Hey! Let’s all hook our minds up to computers, and be real smart!

Words fail me.

Today our computers decided to deny us access to our email: first one, then the other. Patty, with more than a little colorful language, got the email back. Then the computers said, “Oh, yeah?” and stopped me from getting to my blog. Mozilla Firefox was the big offender: just flat-out went on strike. Looks like they changed the format without telling anybody.

If these computers had been operating my car as I was zooming down the Garden State Parkway, you’d see the results on the evening news tonight.

Now I’m coming to you via Google Chrome, until that decides to go belly-up, too.

If I suddenly disappear, rest assured it’s not my fault! $#@#$%&!

44 comments on “More Computer Agony

  1. “High technology” sometimes seems to mean technology that’s been on the bottle (or needle) too long.

  2. Current software is continually upgraded and features appear and disappear accordingly. Believe me, I find it about as frustrating as can be, but don’t have much in the way of solutions. I fully expect the whole house of cards to collapse one of these days.

    Have you heard the recent stories of Tesla automobile problems? It would strike me that people are rushing towards this technology much too fast. If self-driving cars become common I would expect some truly horrific accidents to follow soon thereafter.

    1. It’s apparent to me that we’ve somehow caught up with George Jetson :\

    2. The car was a perfectly reasonable, down-to-earth machine–which they are tarting up so they can hike the cost, planned obsolescence and all that.

    3. From what I’ve heard, Tesla is only surviving because of government incentives. My prediction is that either they will go into the hybrid biz or end up on history’s scrap pile.

    4. Even Elon Musk realized how ridiculous the whole thing looked. In an interview he said you could tell it was real because it looked so fake. Wait! What?! Yep. That’s what he said.

    5. As I see it, the whole thing is a fantasy. I will give them credit for advancing the technology, but as long as it becomes a tool for central planning it is as doomed to failure as any other socialist enterprise.

    6. He couldn’t help laughing when he said it 🙂 He realizes nobody who saw that fiasco actually thought he’d launched a car into space. It did give most of us a pretty good laugh though.

    7. Gee, I missed that one! Musk said he launched a car into space–and the noozies believed him?
      Bugs Bunny once got Elmer Fudd to drive his car to Hawaii, but that required certain modifications.

    8. They believe because they want to believe. Nicolai Tesla believed he could harvest the electricity from the atmosphere and provide unlimited energy to the world. He never actually did it, he just believed it to be possible. The acolytes want this fantasy to be true so they have attached Tesla’s name to all sorts of aspirations for a better world, but there is no substance to any of it. Naming the car after Tesla trades upon this hope, but it’s hardly a lead pipe cinch that these dreams will be realized.

      This morning, on my way to work, I saw a Nissan Leaf with badges on it which said “Zero Emissions”. There’s a minor little problem with that, it isn’t true. The emissions are now coming from the electric power plant, not the tailpipe, but there are still emissions because no one, not even Elon Musk, has come up with a way to create energy without some pollution.

    1. So the noozies did believe it…
      Whatever happened to the skeptical newsman? Yeesh, Kolchak was more skeptical than these bozos!

  3. If I’m reading it right, he did actually launch a Tesla Roadster into Solar orbit. That’s not a particularly large or heavy payload, the Hubble Space Telescope is the size of a school bus.

    I still think it’s a travesty, because the Tesla Roadster is essentially a Lotus Elise body, and I hate to think of any Lotus being out in space when I’m stuck driving a lesser roadster. This is social injustice on an interplanetary scale. 🙂

    1. That couldn’t look any more fake if they tried really, really hard. (that’s a really, really big faker lol)

    2. I think that was his point, it did look fake, but then again, what is a sports car launched into space supposed to look like? Objects in space look different because there is no diffusion of light by the atmosphere. There is the light reflecting off the object (usually sunlight) and blackness, that’s all there is.

    3. To me it looked more fake than Godzilla with his zipper suit 🙂

  4. Snopes is definitely a vote towards the negative, as far as veracity is concerned. I wouldn’t believe them if they said the sky was blue. 🙂

  5. I feel your pain! Last month a Windows 10 update broke my computer completely. I had to take it in to a tech shop to have it completely wiped and reinstalled. I was down for days and spent over a week getting everything put back where it belonged. Now nothing instills fear in my heart like the words “Microsoft updates are ready to be installed…”
    Too bad I can’t send Microsoft the bill.

    1. So do I, and I manage well over 100 computers. 15 points of my blood pressure are attributable to updates. 🙂

    2. It’s called Agile Development. Basically, as I see it, this means that they never really fix anything, just create endless updates. IMHO, software these days is junk.

    3. I’m old enough to remember when the goal was “slim, elegant code.” Now the goal seems to be the biggest bowl of spaghetti code possible. Actually, the situation is mostly the latest incarnation of planned obsolescence: it’s job security for the coders and lots of money for the software companies, who are always selling “newer, better, safer,” etc., products with more and more bells and whistles. All those bells and whistles, of course, weigh down the program and make it crash, but tra la, that’s because you need to buy the latest hardware in order to handle the truckload of spaghetti code, bells, and whistles. So the hardware and device makers get their share of the take as well.

      Pardon my cynicism. At one time I did some data system design, and every new-and-exciting upgrade usually brought new-and-exciting problems with it, including an inability of the hardware to handle the new system requirements.

    4. Dentistry is no longer all that unpleasant, but with my limited abilities, chess is a painful experience for me. Remember the guy that played against the Deep Blue computer? I played against a digital watch and it beat me. To make matters worse, the battery in the watch was dead. 🙂

    5. Today’s chess computers can be set to play at a level of profound stupidity, so we can beat them every time.

    6. Gerbils can beat me every time. Aks any gerbil who will talk to you about it he’ll tell you that westerner dude is a pushover and no self-respecting gerbil would even bother playing him. 🙂

    7. I’m afraid my best days as a chess player are behind me. I keep looking over my shoulder to make sure they’re still there.

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