Rock ’em, sock ’em robots! Damn. I stopped recording just before the chewbacca yell. It was something else.
Technology conspires against me! Seriously and no, I’m not paranoid OR crazy. Hear me out. This morning…my alarm clock didn’t go off. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. It was some daylight saving time-related mishap. And that’s what I thought too. Until I turned on my blackberry and went to check my messages only to discover…the little wheelie thing wasn’t working. Every time I tried to scroll, it would start texting gibberish. Falling back on my tech training, I tried shaking the damn thing – to no avail. I took out the battery, put the battery back in, and turned it back on. The damn wheelie still wasn’t working. Clearly, this was a problem that required a more advanced approach, so I took out the battery, put the battery back in, turned it back on AND shook it. Still no go.
And here’s where it gets weird…or, dare I say, suspiciously insidious. When I got into the office this morning, I asked Brad how he had dealt with a similar problem. “Did you try taking the battery out and putting it back in?”he asked. Yes, I told him, wanting to add I’d even taken the extra step of shaking it.
“Let me have a look,”he offered. I pulled my blackberry out, unlocked it and, suddenly – miraculously – the damn thing was working. Quite the coincidence, no? After being totally unresponsive only an hour earlier, it was conveniently operational again – as it just so happened, right after I’d made a big deal about the fact that it WASN’T working.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, spent breaking Episode 1 of Stargate: Universe’s second season and, of course, approving a couple of hundred comments. Then, when I got home and finally sat down to write today’s entry, my laptop suddenly froze up on me. I rebooted, restarted my entry, and had it freeze up on me again. Three successive reboots and three successive freezes.
Now, come on. One incident is a trivial annoyance. Two incidents you can pass off as mere coincidence. But three? I wonder if those Ghost Hunters guys investigate stuff like this or do they just focus on arresting more traditional phantoms and your occasional revenant?
So I’ve switched over to my old laptop, just checked today’s blog stats and, ZOUNDS!, 10 000 hits today and counting. This the result of a perfect storm of visitors – those who came to check out my pug’s cool surgery scar, those who got here by accident following search engine results for “creepy alley” and “thefudgeshoppe.com in flemington NJ”, and, of course, those who clicked on the link provided by io9 in an editorial on my rant (nestled somewhere between a feature titled “Smackdown Finale: Witch vs. Vampire!” and an article on bully porn). Welcome, one and all, from the semi-regulars who dropped by to tell me how much they’re enjoying the show to that guy/gal(?) in South Korean who threatened to come over and punch me in the face. Enjoy your stay! But before proceeding to post any comments or questions, may I direct first-time visitors to the following highly informative past entries:
http://spambait.wordpress.com/category/aloysius-p-hazzencockle-ali-abbas/
http://josephmallozzi.com/2007/01/21/january-20-2007/
Done? Hope that helped. Okay, now go ahead and post those comments.
Finally, thanks to everyone who took the time to post opinions both positive and negative on the show, past entries, and my papier-mâché busts of every Hanna-Barbera character whose name sounds like a euphemism for something rude (including Zilly, Sperg, Niddler, Red Max, Fleegle, Foofur, and Boneless Chicken). Keep ‘em coming.
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