Cyberkvetch

Totally worthless factoid to amaze your friends: the largest single use of central processor chips is for television remote controls.

Over the years I’ve made some money from computers and have been using them since 1970. I know that they are capable of great blessings, but some have been turned towards the Dark side and become Cyberkvetches, electronic nags that disrupt your serenity and oneness with the Universe.

It is the slow movement with the bow barely touching the strings, more a suggestion of sound, than sound itself, and a cellphone goes off with a bad electronic version of the opening chords of the Fifth Symphony. It’s difficult to recapture the mood after the lynching.

You walk through the door and it starts: the beeping from the answering machine that won’t stop unless you listen to every message; the chirping from the microwave telling you that it has heated the cinnamon roll; the flashing from the VCR telling you there was a power outage; your cellphone beeping randomly to notify you of a weak battery.

You sit down and turn on your computer and every piece of software pops up a flag asking you to check for updates. You go to a web site and a banner announces that you need a new version of the software plug-in to watch the bad animation you didn’t want to see in first place. [Quick question: how many people realize that the icon used for a missing plug-in is supposed to represent a jig-saw puzzle piece…err…okay, how many know what a jig-saw puzzle is? Boy, that’s a really useful symbol.]

You go to the site of the important software you use, wait for three ads to finish, and find you have the most recent version and don’t need to update anything, but you have just lost ten minutes of your life.

Where is the guy who thought that turning computers into neurotic complainers would help sales?