Computers and me

I am the delight and the nightmare of computer departments. The delight, because I always come to them with funny riddles they have never encountered, sometimes never even heard of. The nightmare, because they don't know how to solve them.
Everything started well, however. My first encounter with the Machines occured quite early in life. Many calculators passed into my hands and I never had a problem with them. The first calculator I remember belonged to my father. It had a little red glowing display, not even a liquid cristal diplay, just some kind of lamps. I really liked this calculator.
Some years later I got as a birthday present the summum of technology: Les Maths Magiques. A very nice instrument. You were proposed to solve mathematical problems, and there was a voice telling you all the time "Tu t'es trompé. Essaies encore." (You are wrong. Try again.). The level 3 problems were quite challenging.

But the first touch of a computer I got was certainly at university, where in my second or third year, I learnt the beautiful language of Pascal (which I subsequently never used in my life), and had to run little codes on machines that had seen better days.
The real stuff started during my PhD. Day one, I was presented to my new mate. My first attempt to get on the World Wide Web, resulted a pleasant dialogue between It and me. It: "Do you want to set a cookie?". Me: (puzzled) "A cookie?" [a vague picture of brownies was floating in my brain].

During 4 years, I would, like so many, enjoy the constant upgrades of systems and processors. Word crashing here, Word crashing there. And I discovered the whole zoo of destop bestiary: the EXTREMELY ennoying paperclip who would always try to find out what I was going to do and that I always desesperatly tried to kill with my avenging mouse. Later the paperclip became a dog. I hate dogs. Then I discovered Dr Watson. Aaah, I recall Dr Watson. (forgot which version of Windows he belonged to). Dr Watson always popped in to tell you that you had a problem. And he was right: as soon as he appeared, my computer was freezing, and the only way to reanimate it was to do an emergency shut down...

But this, one would say, are just normal failures. True. However, on top of this, I always got and get special features: my computers have been hacked by viruses so rare that they could have come from space. The computer guy in Leiden was over-exited when I came with my first one, a bit like a biologist discovering a new species. Later he became a bit more blazé, especially because the new species were acting like a plague and spreading all over the campus... At the end, he always looked scared when I entered the room.

Other funny details? My hard discs make their own partitions, hidding some information to me and computer experts. Just passing by a computer made it shut down once (the girl working with it lost 2 days of measurements). Another computer started to display dollar signs on his screen when I looked at it. My laptop DVD burner has been classified in Trondheim as "working", however (we tried three times!) as soon as I am standing within one meter of the laptop, it ejects the DVD before completing the burning... When I am not there, it works perfectly. One of my laptops (yeah, I got several in a record time of two years!) started to shut down unexpectedly. Another displayed "2" when I was pressing "+"... The last one (the one I am typing these words with) had a slight malfunction too from the start: I had to press the on/off button a bit to the right and as hard as I could to get it on. Since the on/off button is NEVER faulty, so I was told, it is attached to the motherboard. I therefore got a new motherboard. The computer guy was a bit grumpy about it.

From my start in Delft on, I never had a week without a problem. First it was a loooong way to get all the programs I needed to be installed and running properly. The computer guys became crazy and never understood WHY the licences worked for all other computers but mine. Then, the main problems were clearly due to the stupid server migration that was decided some months ago. Of course, my computer was one of those that does not have the right configuration to withstand the migration (that was discovered not so late ago).

But forget the dark times: today, I am happy. I wrote a long complain letter to the computer service manager, and as a result I got a brand-new computer and it is working as it should. For now. But I am confident. And better: I will soon get a new laptop (also from University). I feel I deserve it: for two years now I have been working on my personal laptop. The poor thing is entitled to a quiet retirement.
I wanted to thank the manager responsable for the purchase of the new computer, but I was told he quited his job and that he now works for another compagny ... 

my actual (personal) laptop...

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