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Sunday, April 25, 2010

My toaster was talking to me...

...so I put a cloth over it's head.

It's quiet now.

All of this "stuff", electronic gadgets and the like, are getting too complicated. Too complex for their own, or my, good.

We have all run across DVDs, from video stores (so quaint that they're still called "video stores", no?) that cannot be played. We turn them over and marvel at what abuse they seem to have suffered. What do some people do? Attack the disks with carving knives?

So, the sensible player refuses to play them. Nothing reasonable can be made of the stream of bits detected by the laser.

That makes perfect sense.

The other day, Thursday to be exact, I bought the blu-ray version of "Avatar". Yes, I know, had to have it on the very day of release. That's just the way I am. I've learned to live with it.

Ready to enjoy an evening of magic, I put the disc in the slot and...was greeted by a message saying my player wasn't up to date enough to play this disc.

The disc was dissing my player? Who asked its opinion?

So I connected the player to the net and told it to go update itself. And so it did - for the best part of an hour.

I re-tried the disc. Close, but no cigar. Seems still not quite up the exacting standards of my nice, shiny, new disc. The player couldn't find any newer software by itself. But I did. Download, burn to disc, insert in drive...and wait. Another hour and the player proclaimed itself up-to-date.

Well past bedtime by now, and way past frustrated on the emotional scale, but I had to see if the disc would deign to play.

It did. I said something rude, turned the thing off, and went to bed.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
copyright, 2010 by KjM

8 comments:

  1. It does seem we are a slave to updating our technological marvels. I bought a PSPgo last year and my first few hours of ownership were much as you describe here. :)

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  2. I'm with you - I don't want to spend so much of my time trying to learn how to use the latest upgrade, the latest gadget, only to find out 6 mos later that I have to repeat the process. I suppose my attitude comes with age. :P

    As for my toaster, I hide it in the cupboard when not in use. Therefore, it's very grateful to be let out once in a while and never talks back to me...

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  3. Ah, the marvels of technology, right?
    I only update unimportant software when I really need to or it starts updating itself and I don't notice in time. :P

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  4. Marvels indeed. I'm sort of used to this on my computer(s), and my phone, and my... (sigh)

    But my DVD player? Please no.

    I remember the insanity of refrigerators with Internet connections back in the day. I even saw one once at a Microsoft facility - proudly proclaiming "Error 404 Page cannot be found".

    Can you imagine the update requirements?

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  5. Re:Can you imagine the update requirements?

    No, but it would be nice to be able to hook the fridge up to the internet and let it get downloads of oh, say jam and shrimp.

    On a completely separate note: I like that your countertop and dishcloth are color coordinated. You and I would probably see eye to eye on the whole lego issue. I have to color coordinate legos if I'm making a building. Otherwise the universe explodes.

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  6. "color coordinated" - ah, I've been found out!

    Yes. I do tend to coordinate that way, unconsciously even. I mean, we can't have the universe exploding now, can we?

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  7. What did the toaster say to you? (Mine is stubbornly silent.)

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  8. It was making rude comments about my abilities as a chef :-}

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