Oh, To Be Amish

I've not had a good run-in with electronics recently.

First, my camera developed dust specks on the sensor. I tried to save the camera myself, thinking, how difficult can it be to open it up and clean the dust specks away, I'm not going to pay the shop $70 USD for that, they have to find other ways to cheat me of my hard-earned er pocket money.

30 agonizing minutes later, after I electrocuted myself on the circuit board and saw sparks fly (not in the usual good way I'm used to), I beat a hasty retreat. Twas a bitter defeat, for I had already removed Screws 01 through 11, but was unable to locate Screw No. Haha-You-Can't-Find-Me-Cause-You're-Not-Scientifically-Inclined.

I thought of my electrical-engineering friends, who would have easily flipped out the circuit board in a jiffy and avoided that nasty shock too. Then I thought of law and how it was so terribly helpful a degree in everyday life.

My streak continued. Last week, my laptop's fan started spinning louder than ever, and it wasn't even normal loud - I could hear it from outside my room with the door closed. I consulted another friend in law, and she told me to shut it down, let it rest for a while, and it would be fine by the next morning. Hmm. Law. I sense a trend.

Now I'm no electronics whiz, but I know enough about hardware to realize that if something fails once, it's going to fail again sooner or later. No amount of rest or TLC is going to restore it. Simply wishing that the problem would go away was not going to do a fig - I needed to get it fixed. Properly.

This time though, with the recent lessons from the Camera Incident fresh in my head, and a vow not to repeat the same costly mistakes, I was going to do things differently. I was going to open up my laptop... with rubber slippers on.

30 excruciating minutes later, after I broke a hinge and was left with only 12 out of the 14 screws I should have had (not in the usual sense too), I called it a day. Actually, I called it other unprintable names. I put it back together, switched it on and the fan was louder than ever.

I tried to look at the bright side of things, like how a friggin madman hadn't just rushed through my door during the entire sordid operation and stabbed me whilst I was deep in concetration. It made me feel a little better.

(An interesting thought occurred to me at this time - if I opened up a Macbook, what would its insides look like? Simpler and more intuitive than a PC's? Or would I find a smaller PC inside, running the whole system? What an understandable sham it would be. Shock shock, horror horror.)

Left with no alternative, I sent it in for repairs. During this trying period, a friend who's surely a devious Apple Witch in disguise attempted to induce me to the Dark Side and buy a Macbook. Why not, she said, when your PC laptop has failed you over and over again?

Her spell lasted long enough for me to find myself standing in the Den of Evil, the Apple fortress at 34th, bewildered and shaking with naked terror. Begone, I chanted, begone ye foul temptress! For shame! To ask me to consider nubile young pretty Macbooks while my sagging aging fugly Rei is fighting for her life this very instant!

(... I did caress a few Macbook Airs though, and briefly lost myself in fantasies of a different world, one where Rei and I never met, and I could have a Macbook without a hundred friends RUBBING IT IN that I should have got one from the start.)

Then, to cap it all off, the earphones I bought just days ago started malfunctioning too, and all this despite me taking the very best care of it. I rushed back to the store first this time, but only because I lacked the tools to take it apart - the masochist in me definitely would have tried.

At this rate I'm going to have to stop personifying my electronics by giving them names, for then it would affect me a lot less when they do actually fail. But oh, what a joyless alternative that would be.