Technofrustration

Computers are wonderful things. A friend can, in mere seconds, share her dreams and pains with me from three thousand miles away. I can learn about my uncle (something like six thousand miles away) and his pending hernia operation in far less time than a carrier pigeon would take to traverse the distance. I can track our finances, however depressing an endeavour that might be, as well as upload digital photographs recently taken, listen to music, and print documents both profound and banal. I can share my ideas with the world, no matter how irrelevant to its continued functioning the world might consider them, by hitting just a few keys, or record my voice and edit it. I can learn about goings on in Iraq or Nepal with the greatest of ease. I can even find out what kind of happy bunny I am.

But I can only do these things if the gods of technology continue to smile benevolently upon me, and the last couple of days they've been blowing raspberries in my general direction.

I'm out two days of work on my social movement history project because of technical problems, and I haven't been able to check my primary email account since early afternoon because the server appears to be down. I have now fixed the former problem -- not sure why it started, but it is gone now. I thank my lucky stars that I use Linux so this is really the first unexplained stability issue I've had since I installed my current version of the operating system in the autum of 2003. If I used Windows I'm sure this would happen every other week. As for the email hassle, I'm hoping somebody back in Hamilton notices and fixes it tomorrow, but the account is through a community net so it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that it might be out until Monday. Pfui.