Terms of Endearment

It hates me.

I know, not the kind of post one would expect on a day of false cheerfulness, unsaid expectations, uncomfortable silences and of course a very thinning wallet. Since none of them concern me and I’m of the opinion only murders are to be committed, not a 22 year old (of course those grapes are sour), let me come back to the issue at hand. The ‘it’ in context is my office comp.

Like kids from most middle class families in the 90s down south, I grew up watching serials on Doordarshan during the most impressionable stages of growing up. One of the characters that used to amuse me was the shape embedded in cosmos from Mahabharath which goes like “Main (long pause) Samay (long pause) Hoon” till the next break. I used to wonder can anything be more slower than this, till I saw the dialogue delivery in junoon.

Now you must see my computer here and you’ll see why I got reminded of these. Of course my comp in accordance with the new technologies exhibits ultra slow motion, bullet-time, freeze frame and many such amazing technologies that it has no business incorporating and not when I am using it!

Of course the relation I share with my compiler is something so special, especially just before major releases of my tool.(by that I mean product, don’t skew it) It reminds me of those old bollywood movie scenes between the ‘gaon ki gori’ and ‘shehari babu’. Just when the ‘shehari babu’ puts in all his efforts and thinks he’s gonna get somewhere with ‘gaon ki gori’, she gets up abruptly and delivers dialogue on sanskar and parampara in a shrill voice looking at the ground and exits leaving the guy baffled. Well almost similar here, only all I expect is some output and all I get is highlighted exceptions! (Most time it works the 2nd time without me having to change anything)

And though I know, I demand a lot with 14 windows open at any given point of time (12 of which are blogs/cartoons), I feel sometimes it does things just to piss me off. Just the other day it shut down all the open windows and demanded to be restarted or will go and complain to Microsoft. And worse still, it hides my folders when I want it (I’m serious) and doesn’t allow me to connect to other systems and asks me to go to hell (contact network administrator). There are times when it makes the electronics engineer in me wants to rip its circuitry apart, capacitor for capacitor, till the silicon in its diodes hurts. Of course the fact that the IS team will render me penniless (paisa less in the Indian context) if I do that, keeps me in check.

My comp at home also used to conspire against me and keep disconnecting me from the net whenever I’m chatting with a girl after ten in the night or shutting down on its own when I’m playing games before my exams. I strongly suspected my mom’s hand in this and wondered how she could have done that for a long time till I met my office comp. Now I kind of resigned to the fact that Its just my luck. And I’m gonna put up with its every mood swing in the hope this experience will help me someday in the near future. And yes for all those who sympathized with the computer (yes, I mean you two), ya I will try to understand its perspective and will love it not despite its flaws but along with its flaws. (from a forward that made as much sense as Raj Thackrey’s ideology)

These are afterall the terms and conditions of the long association of endearment. So while I learn to try to be more understanding and keep my psycho-cyber tendencies under check, for all those people who believe in winged fat kids shooting arrows here’s a quote to mull over.

“The difference between ‘involvement’ and ‘commitment’ is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast. The hen was involved and the pig was committed” – Anonymous

Happy Valentines Day!