Things I used to forget before I had a place to write them down...etc.

From Et cetera

No sense of humor whatsoever in these machines. Let's say you spend several hundred hours writing up a term paper for your class. It ends up being about six million pages long and upon closing the word program after printing, the computer asks "Do you want to save the changes you've made?" Well, duh, what do you think? I mean, you could tell the computer "No thank you, I'd rather just type it all up again later because I like to torture myself despite what the doctor tells me about self-mutilation." But the second you click "No" the computer goes, "Well, alright then," and deletes everything you've done. At this point you should be staring blankly at the screen pondering why exactly you clicked "No." Then in frustration, you scream, "C'mon man!! I was just being sarcastic!! Can't you take a joke, for cryin out loud!?!! OF COURSE I want to save it, you idiot!" But the computer just doesn't listen. No sense of humor at all.

Clearly, it also has very little sense of sense itself. I mean, if I was a computer and I just witnessed someone typing up a big essay like that and then clicking "No" when asked if they'd like to save changes, I'd bring up another little question box saying, "Are you SURE you don't want to save changes?" or perhaps "I really think you should save changes. Care to take my word for it?" or maybe "Well why not?" These kinds of reassuring questions might save frustrated college students the terrible financial burden of having to buy a new computer every time they pour a goblet full of beer down the central processing unit in a fit of rage having just lost all their work to an emotionless machine.

Though there is another perspective. In fact, come to think of it, this is the more likely of the two. Perhaps computers DO have a sense of humor, but it's a really twisted one. Ever have a computer turn on you at the last second and you could SWEAR that you heard it laughing as the hard disk gurgled its well-known loading tunes. Oh yes, it happens. I once wrote a lengthy report on a computer, and went to do a spell check (Which is something I rarely do, but I suppose the lord of all that is dark and desolate compelled me to this time as the first broken bone in what was to become a long, depressing evening of hospitalizable injuries) and it was at this point that the computer tricked me into thinking that it was doing something good for me. Oh yes, a deceitful foe it be. In any case, it did spell check my document, but not before mysteriously deleting three quarters of it, a piece of writing which was never seen again. So there I was, thinking that my report was being improved by the spell checker device, when in fact, it was being eaten. And deep inside the cold plastic casing of my personal computer, the microchips laughed and laughed. Ha ha! they say. Ha ha!