Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Limb Loss

Misery. That's the first word that comes to mind as I reflect on my present situation.

Y'see, I'm typing this on a PS3 running Linux (Ubuntu 8.10 if you're interested), sitting about three feet from the screen with a keyboard on my lap, and not glued to the screen of that technological marvel known as the MacBook Pro. Disaster (or rather, incompetence) has struck, dear reader, and as a result I have been left without my main link to the outside world for six days now.

Over two years ago, after a bit of soul-searching just north of the US border, I came to the conclusion that home is where the computer is, and since that time, the symbiosis between man and machine has only strengthened.

I'm not ashamed to admit (although perhaps I should be) that without my RSS feeds prompting me to read up on current events, I'm rapidly falling out of touch with world affairs; without convenient access to my podcasts, I seem to be regurgitating the same science-based titbits that I was last week; without my password manager I've found myself hopelessly locked out of half the sites I once didn't think twice about logging into; without the scheduled playing of my 'morning music' those early starts are getting increasingly sluggish; and without my productivity software the simple tasks I have to do at work require a great deal more effort as I grapple with an old Windows XP machine. Oh - and without convenient Skype access, my long-distance relationship feels like it does span quite a distance.

Seeing as it serves as my primary means to accessing my educational, entertainment, and emotional needs, it's quite a loss. Earlier on I likened it to losing a limb.

On the bright side - I'm actually making progress on the books I got for Christmas now that indulging my internet addiction is more of a chore than it's worth. Always a sliver lining on this blog, eh?

So how about you, dear reader - are there any devices in your life that you can't live without? Were they ever taken from you? Leave a comment and we'll try and get a little support group going.

3 comments:

Fin said...

What happened to the 'Pro?

Sully said...

It's a long and complicated tale, Finaly, of a man who fought back in his darkest hours, and overturned even the most intimidating tides of oppressively bad customer service...

Might make a blog about it to add it to my 'don't fuck with Sully' line of posts.

UberApe said...

My phone charger has gone AWOL, for the first time in about 2 years.

When they deprived me of gmail at work I thought: don’t panic, you still have your phone. It's a necessary distraction, an analgesic to dull the pain of realising you're just a temporary talking monkey living a meaningless temporary life, and here you are using that valuable time sitting in front of a computer doing a soporific job that sucks large fat fucking testicles.

I better throw in a smiley face :)

So, to answer the question: when your phone is taken away, for whatever reason, it's teh suxors.