No More Favours, Thanks...

I’ve occasionally mentioned that I’m currently living in the age of malfunctions. It’s one thing after another – my body, my equipment, my circumstances generally, everything. OK, so here’s the scenario.

It’s 2.30 in the morning. You’ve had a beer and several double scotches (malt, no less) and you’re about to go to bed feeling suitably anaesthetised. The computer chooses that moment to throw a wobbler. What do you do (apart from scream, which compulsion you resist for several reasons?)

You start digging in various places like Computer and Control Panel, but you’re not quite thinking straight so the process is a bit uncertain and disjointed. In fact, the process might be described as ‘malfunctioning.’ You fail to realise how ironic that is at the time, so you have another scotch and try again. The second attempt is no better, in fact… well… don’t need to elaborate, do I? But you’re becoming almost manically irritated, so you try to pull yourself together and make a third attempt. And you have another scotch because your need of the stuff is growing with every passing, increasingly dysfunctional freggin’ second! Matters don’t improve, and by now even you are beginning to realise that the scotch isn’t helping.  At 3.30am, what vestige of sense you have left in your utterly spaced out state persuades you that the only option is to go to bed and get the problem sorted tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever. By now, however, you’re quite convinced that:

1) There really is a God and he doesn’t like you very much. Or:

2) You’ve attracted a sprite into your environment whose sole function is to cause you difficulty – and he’s probably enjoying it, to boot. Or:

3) The fabric of the matrix is crumbling and about to fall away altogether, leaving only an empty void where there were once trees, people and ice cream.

This morning I jumped through all those hoops you have to jump through in order to access the help forums of both Blogger and Firefox. I also rang my ISP, just in case there was something happening that might explain everything. I got the same advice from two different sources. It seems the problem was probably a faulty keyboard, ‘and here’s how to put it right.’ I did that and now it seems to be right again, so it appears I’ve learned something about computers and the internet that I didn’t know before. Which is good, obviously, only...

Life keeps kicking me in the teeth, breaking a few and saying ‘sort that out.’

‘How?’

‘Find out.’

‘OK.’

It happens to all of us, doesn’t it? Always has. It just seems to be happening rather too much to me at the moment and I wish it would give me a break, even though it might be doing me a favour in the long run.