...beneath these tragic waves
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things you can't believe you heard, but you did
Jan 17, 2001

I was sitting silently in my little corner, computer screen humming in my ear like a sweet lullaby, it was all I could to keep my head up. The class I was in is one that I'm rather overqualified for, so I wasn't paying an extreme amount of attention to the lecture. A dark prophecy, and unexpected comment, brought my head swinging around and opened my ears (and eyes) a bit. The instructor had apparently been warning everyone about using the built in I-Omega zip drives that are found on most of the computers, as they cause the "click of death" which can cause lost data and sometimes even the hard drive it seems. Not wishing to lose any work, as the rare times I actually do some I want to keep it to place on a pedestal later for the world to see, I decided to heed her words, even though I'd known of the problem before.

She began to explain what to do if you encountered this problem and made it clear, through much repeating and weird waving motions like she was trying to land a plane with those little glowing sticks, that you were not to take disk which had been victim "to the disease" from computer to computer because it could spread "like a virus".

"It's an insidious problem, kind of like AIDS", she said. Not missing a beat, I broke out into uncontrollable laughter. I felt bad for doing it because I personally thought that was a really thoughtless comment to make (laughing at it made me feel like I had made an unspoken, evil pact that I agreed with her). Not only because you never know who might have AIDS, but just on general principle. And, well, call me crazy but comparing a zip disk getting destroyed to a incurable, life threatening sickness seems a bit on the extreme. I know zip disks cost a lot and all but come on.

I'm not one to easily get offended, especially since I rarely think before I speak and offend others often. I feel I have to be lenient with people who might perhaps make innocent comments that aren't quite so, because otherwise I feel I'd be a hypocrite. But I must say I was taken 'aback' slightly and if I happened to be a person with AIDS, or had a friend with it, I'd no doubt have gotten rather up in arms. In her defense, I believe this was one of those comments that wasn't quite processed all the way before it became vocal. I find the comment worthy of note no matter the situation, however.

Needless to say (I assume), I listened the rest of the period for more juicy tidbits to share, like a turkey vulture waiting for the stumbling human in brown, torn clothing to fall over dead. "Not riveting", would pretty much describe the rest of what she said but my unsurpassed ability to perform ironic feats came in to play before she had finished.

All the complicated comparisons between zip drives and AIDS got me thinking how lucky I was to have a working zip disk on hand. That in turn reminded me I needed to back some work up I had done before some 2-legged, walking pathogen decided to wreck havoc on my computer and pull it down into ruin. As I worked (i.e. moved my index finger to click things...whew), I caught various comments from the teacher while she continued about what she was doing.

"Entire companies have gone under because of the click of death" was the first. My thoughts - if the entire livelihood of your company is riding on one zip disk and a hard drive, chances are you probably aren't ready to strike out on your own.

"I-Omega, I guess not wanting to admit fault, claims that it is because people drop their disks that cause the problems. It warps the magnetic disks inside, then it harms the reader in the drive", to which I think we all can give a cough to cover up our voices as we say "bullshit".

Convinced this wasn't possible and that even the obviously incompetent I-Omega couldn't make a reader so bad that the laser somehow reversed on itself and destroyed its capabilities to do the job it was created for, I didn't pay much heed to the warning. Not like I go around throwing disks like frisbees.

"...blah blah...click of death...blah blah...I-Omega...blah blah...dropping disks...blah blah...", I heard as I finished backing my stuff up. Against all logic, I did the standard procedure for getting my disk back from a mac; I put it in the trash (and *pop*, out it comes...surprise). At that moment, I had apparently given my brain a short break and my hands free reign of doing their job without the supervisor, because the sound of my disk hitting the floor was deafening. The class fell silent like a gunshot had been fired. As if the teacher had compared dropping a disk to getting skin cancer, I broke out in a fit of laugher again at my own stupidity and the sheer irony of what had happened. There was a giggle from the instructor and the girl next to me, but besides that, no one seemed to see the humor in the situation. My guess is they probably don't know what a disk is and assumed what I had dropped was some sort of Little Debbie snack. A few of them seemed to be getting annoyed, including the fabulous foursome (who spent all day giggling over sound files they found of people farting, because after 20 years of life or so, it's still funny!....especially when you do it over and over and over). My reaction to that was to curl my lip in an Elvis manner, only with my eyebrows sloped downward to show I was angry, and mental project the words "bite me" to them. If I have to listen to them be retarded all day, they can deal with me laughing a bit. It's not as if I was "HAW HAW HAW!" but rather a semi-silent chuckle now and again.

I guess I should be nicer to the four of them. After all, being retarded is almost as bad as having a keyboard with a broken F1 key!


"I'm locked in a place where no one goes..."

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