i understand that many people who are interested in things like blogs are by necessity interested in things like technology. since my brother is one of those techno-engineer-gurus who can answer fancy questions like (and this actually happened) "hey, why won't my computer turn on? oh, wait, never mind... it's not plugged in yet," i understand that people like that are irritated by people like me who think that technological wonders happen at the whim of the circuit gods. but i can't help it. maybe it's that i don't have a lot of money and so my electronics are, well, not very good. but i regularly assign animist tendencies to my electronics. my blender is possessed; my stereo is a critic and prefers to play cake "short skirt long jacket" to any other cd track; my toaster is clingy and doesn't like to part with the bread for fear of loneliness; my stove is a minimalist and doesn't think i really need more than one burner; my refrigerator lacks self-esteem and demands attention with the chugging-rattling sounds it makes. even my brother, who has worked for very fancy technical companies, has lived with me and my bad electronics long enough to allow a certain degree of mysticism into my discussions regarding household appliances.
so imagine my surprise yesterday when my friend the figure skater, who happens to be a tech-buff figure skater, didn't nod indulgently when i suggested that my laptop's mouse track-pad had attention deficit disorder and couldn't be bothered with keeping my cursor in the same place on the screen while i typed. reasonable, no? no. apparently this is unacceptable, and there are drivers that fix such things. before i knew it, there was an installing and an updating and an adjusting of my preferences. and like ritalin, the driver now makes my track-pad stay on focus and do its work.
i am a reasonable person, and understand that from this i should conclude that technical problems have logical solutions. but i can't help wishing that my theory of animist gadgets is not only true, but that people could also have drivers. wouldn't it be lovely if we could just download patches for our acquaintances' loopholes? let me be the first in line to download a personal-space-preserver, an awkward-silence-blocker, super-hygiene-protection. where's technology when i need it?
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