COMPUTER CACOPHONY

After an Engineering degree in Electronics and Communication, and having worked as a Software Engineer for two years you’d expect a person to know “The Computer” like a friend. Not true in my case, the hideous thing just isn’t a friend; to me it’s a stubborn 6- year-old with unpredictable mood swings. Yesterday, my comp in my workplace gave me one of those “I-am-going-to-be-difficult-because-I-can” days.
As soon as I logged in I noticed that my system was real sluggish and the cursor made trails of its image (like a string of white arrows) wherever I moved the mouse, being used to such occurrences, I smiled, “the loading of a high resolution wallpaper usually causes this” I reasoned.
In a Support project, we need to check mails from the users of our software solution, so I tried to open my mailbox, “funny”, I thought, “I’d typed the password correctly, just like I’ve done a hundred times before”, but it prompted me to retype the password. Strange, but no explanation offered itself.
I proceeded to connect to the Application, It was slow in logging me on, and periodically the application would go back to the login screen. “Now what could this be”? From the multifarious tangles of my brain noodles an explanation took form, “Voila!! A session expiry”!!. “But what could have caused that”? I imagined some freaky network technician vigorously shaking the network cables.
Suddenly, almost in unison, all the softwares and tools that I use in my system began abusing me with errors and hexadecimal swear words. I imagined an irate kid throwing a bat at me. Vanity joined forces with Reason and launched a surgically guided thought into my dormant brain, “Cool it dude!”, the thought told me, “just restart your thingumabob”. I followed the divine cerebral intervention, and…. “Crap!!” the bloody thing blacked out on me!

Later a dirty goat from the Network and Security team came in, spent some time on my system, offered no explations, told me I could log-in and walked off. He was wearing an expression that seemed to tell me “You’re an awful parent”. “C’mon, give me break, I’m dealing with Calvin here”.

---Blabbergob (Sujay Sukumar)