Electric Mayhem

I didn’t think that there would ever be a time when I would look back at putting my phone through the wash as the good old days in terms of my various electronics, but there you have it. There has been a mutiny amongst the various gadgets, y’all, and it’s getting more annoying by the day. I have never thought of myself as a particularly plugged in person, but I guess it just takes a couple of cords being pulled to realize how I depend on all my little blinky-light-thingies.

I guess it’s possibly worth mentioning that I have not really chosen my gadgets; for the most part they have been very generous gifts to me. I am the very antithesis of an early adopter; usually I wait until they come down in price and I kind of fidget around wondering if I should get one, and then if I do end up buying something I usually end up deciding to save forty dollars and get a cheap crappy version of whatever it is that I want. None of the gifts my family has given me have been cheap and crappy, I am happy to report, but they are all getting along in years and recently, they have begun to take a little attitide with me.

So first it was the phone, back in February. For some odd reason that whole situation ended up going as well as possible, and I sailed along for several months without a care in the world, checking email from my bed whenever I wanted, taking silly pictures at the least provocation, and listening to my iPod every day on my walk to and from work. I went to Australia and brought everything but the laptop with me, and we were all getting along fine until I managed, somehow, probably when I was on the wallaby project, to get some sort of super outback dirt in the lens, thereby breaking it permanently. I had to miss out on taking pictures of my fun weekend in Innisfail with Melanie, and I really didn’t want to miss out on taking boat trip pictures, so I bought the cheapest digital camera the shop in Cairns had, and got on with my life, thinking that I could take the old camera to get fixed once I got back to Wellington.

But then…then my phone battery started going weird, occasionally causing me to lose my entire contacts list for no good reason, and requiring multiple hours of charging per day. And then my iPod broke for real, right at the beginning of a road trip when having a lot of music would have been sort of ideal. I had to call Australia and fight with Apple about warranties, and when I finally did get the new iPod? Well of course I needed to upgrade the OS on the laptop, for another two hundred dollars–two hundred dollars, I might add, that I’d been looking forward to spending in Rarotonga and Waitomo and Whangarei, not at the most condescending of all condesceding Mac Stores, thanks very much. And I was all excited to finally get my iPod going–because honestly, that’s what I use a computer for, listening to music, looking at pictures, and stalking people on Facebook. I don’t care about anything else…and clearly the computer feels the same way about me, because there was a hard drive something or other when I tried to install, and so I had to shake my fist at the sky and then hang my head in shame when I called for a personal tech support call for my favorite Wellington Mac geek. I really really hate asking my nerdy friends for computer help because they are always so nice and sweet to me when they tell me things like “Well, I think it’s that the Caps Lock key is on” or “You just push Ctrl-Alt-Del” and they are never mean or awful to me and I just feel so guilty for taking time away from their taking over the world via the internet or whatever.

So the other night gorgeous Nahum and fabulous Deirdre had me over to their house for computer help and the most delicious dinner ever and I was so excited that I was finally going to be able to listen to my new boyfriend Calvin Harris on the bus. Nahum said some geeky things and I nodded my head and showed him how sleek and shiny my new engraved iPod was and he tappy-tapped on the keyboard and I went “Need me for anything else?” and then I went to chop asparagus for this really amazing salad Deirdre made, grateful to my excellent friends for helping out someone who just wanted to listen to music and who was also very hungry. And then I heard a plaintive “Uh, Chiara?” from the other room, and my heart sank, because I have come to recognize that tone of voice from my various geeky friends. “What is it THIS time?” I quavered.

Well, OF COURSE the power supply chose that exact moment to fitz out, and of course the laptop hardly holds a charge, and of course there were no other power supplies to be had immediately. Nahum, bless his heart, immediately put out a call on the geek network to borrow a new cord, which we should have in a day or so, and promised to have me over again to get everything set up–dinner will be on me this time. And I took all my gadgets home with me, no more able to listen to Jarvis Cocker than I was the day before…actually even less able because of course I don’t want to run the battery down even further.

The laptop and the Leopard and the iPod are sitting patiently on my living room floor, right next to my camera with its batteries that need to recharge for eighteen hours to take three pictures. I have had to drastically cut down my blog reading and Facebooking but A has been very graciously letting me borrow her laptop so at least I can see new LOLcats every day, which is, as far as I’m concerned, a basic human right. I’m not…mad at my appliances, really, because everyone has bad days (or in this case, months). And of course everyone should be so lucky to have any sort of appliances at all, let alone the money to fix them when need be, let alone friendly friends who will help with said fixing. I’m just feeling a little on edge, that’s all, because maybe all the gadgets aren’t sitting quietly. Maybe they’re just biding their time.