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luckdogpuppy · 3 years

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Why I Hate Electronics

In the old days we had ms-dos and had to fiddle with config.sys and himem.sys spending endless hours and sleepless nights trying to get the computer to run a program. Computers have come a long way since windows 95 but using them certainly hasn’t gotten any easier. I remember wondering back then why they couldn’t make a computer that actually worked, that actually figured out how to make itself work and work with other programs and devices…after all, it is a computer, isn’t it? No, instead they just get more complicated and mystifying. Now its modems and routers and ethernets and wifi that drive me crazy, and trying to cope with constant buffering when I try to watch Netflix. Who the hell can remember which remote to use to access the right button? And when you do find the right remote to access your tv who can figure out how to get to whatever it is you need to fix? And how many fucking passwords can a person remember? And passwords have to be more complicated every year. I can barely use my phone, flipping from one screen to another with my finger. It seems the only way to get out of certain screens is to shut your phone off and restart it. And nobody tells you this stuff…you have to figure it out on your own. Ever read the Microsoft manual? Who does? Just looking at the pages makes me scream. And even when you go to Youtube they go so fast you have to pause it every two seconds to write that shit down. I have endless sheets of paper in a drawer filled with step-by-step instructions on how to do computer problems. Why? Why can’t computers do these things by themselves? The last time I lost my internet connection I got all excited when I discovered this thing on my computer that told me it would run a diagnostic of my system and troubleshoot it. Wow, that sounded great. When I went there and ran it it said “you have lost your internet connection.”

They say that computers can do everything, but they still haven’t given us a computer that can fix itself or even do something as simple as letting us plug it into a router without having to go through an eleven step process to get the damn thing to work. What pisses me off is that I know they could do this. I can’t even get my two wifi extenders to work. By some miracle I did get them to work for a while but one day they both just shut off and I haven’t been able to get them running since. I can’t get past the step where I’m asked for a password. It says I’m supposed to use the one on the back of the router. Well, what it says on the back of the router is “password: (leave the field blank)”. Except when I am asked for the password it won’t let me leave the field blank. Instead it says “your password is not long enough.” Then I’m told to go to my wifi icon on my taskbar to find out what the password is. But I don’t have a wifi icon on my taskbar. So I go online and find that there are pages on how to find and/or replace the wifi icon on my taskbar, and after going through all five of the different methods of finding and replacing that icon on the taskbar without success I learn that there is no way I’m gonna get that icon to appear on the taskbar because the Windows 10 system that came with my computer doesn’t come with a wifi icon on the taskbar; Microsoft removed that file in the latest version of Windows 10. I learn that I have to buy Windows 10 Pro to get that stupid wifi icon. Are you shitting me?

I finally did find an obscure site that explained a convoluted way to find out what your router and extender passwords were. You have to start with your command prompt to get there…but that didn’t help…surprise, those passwords there didn’t work either. And don’t even ask me how to go back there and look at those passwords again. It took me an hour to figure out how to get to my command prompt from my start menu. Hint: don’t left click like you’re used to doing. When you left click on the Start menu you are presented with a long and very impressive list of places to go, all in alphabetical order, and you would think that the “Command” prompt would be there under the “c” column. But no, there is nothing that says “Command Prompt”. No, you have to right click instead. You’ll find another list of places to go there. But even then there is nothing that says “Command Prompt.” You have to click on “run” for the command prompt to come up. There is a lot of shit you can do through the command prompt but nobody is going to tell you what the secret codes are that will allow you to do those things. It used to be easy to get to the command prompt. All you had to do was click on the “Start” button. But now they’ve decided to make this an hour-long quest to find it. I have all this shit written down on endless sheets of paper in that drawer. Truth be told this electronic world makes me tear my hair out. I hate it with a passion. What pisses me off even more is that I also love it…when it’s working.

I can’t even get my computer to recognize my own email address. I bought a new Dell desktop three years ago and still get a daily message saying that I need to fix a problem with my Microsoft account. So I periodically go through the process and change my password but no matter what I do I still get that stupid message. I even had Microsoft tech reps guide me through the process three times now yet I still get that same old message. And every time I try to access my Microsoft account I’m told “that email address is already used by a different account.” I deleted all my accounts and started over but the message still comes up…the problem remains. I’ve explained all this to those tech reps but nothing keeps that message from coming up. I even signed up for a different email address but that didn’t fix the problem either and now I have an extra “Outlook” email address that I never use and wouldn’t know where it is if I did want to use it. I think the problem started when I bought a new Dell laptop. I had to sign up for a Microsoft account then. But I didn’t care for the laptop and sent it back two days later and ordered the desktop…and now Microsoft still thinks that whoever owns that laptop has the rights to my email address and not me. I explained all this to those Microsoft tech reps but that didn’t solve anything either. Yeah, this stuff bothers me. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like loose ends. I like things to be neat and tidy and feel like everything is in its place. But this computer stuff feels all scattered and disconnected and just fucked up. I know it’s working on my mind even when I’m not struggling with it.

In order to fix my Netflix buffering problem (and my wife’s need to have internet access for her work-at-home job) I bought a new router. I’ve had the same old cheap router for 6 years so I figure its time for a new one. I did just buy a 40 ft ethernet cable that I plugged into the back of the router and ran it along the ceiling down the hall and into the back of the tv in the living room, but we’re still having problems with “Home not available” still coming up at times. I actually bought a new router last year; an Archer A7. But I was never able to get it to work so I had to send it back, thinking it must have been defective. I realize now that it probably worked just fine and that the problem was me…that I couldn’t figure out how to get it to work. Then I had a helluva time trying to get the old one up and running again. Did you ever feel that your brain was on fire and ready to burst? That was how I felt after struggling with those two routers for 3 days. So my new router came last week and it turns out it’s the same model; the same one I tried to set up and sent back last year. I thought it was a different one because it was called a Tp-link, but its actually an Archer A7 too. On the box it says it’s a AC 1900 and on the instruction sheet it also says it’s a MU-MIMO Wi-Fi Router, so just figuring out what these things are called is a science in itself. So now I’m frightened to death to even try to set it up. The first thing the instructions say is “if this” and “if that”…as if I know the answers to these ifs. There is also a long list of FAQs in case you have problems and need help. That scares the shit out of me, too, cause I know I’m gonna need help…and lots of it. Then it gives me three different methods of setting the thing up, all of them quite convoluted and requiring me to access various internet sites, SSIDs and wireless passwords. Then I have to go to a number url: 192.188.1.1 and I remember that this is where I had to go to get my extenders to work but I was never able to get those urls to come up. Then I found out that they only come up if you use Google Chrome, and of course there is nothing in the instructions that tells you you can only use Google Chrome. No, you have to find that out on your own too. So now I have to change my browser and come up with another password so I can access Google Chrome. I am so afraid that I will not be able to complete these steps correctly and that I will then have to struggle another two days to get my old router to work again that the new router is still sitting on a shelf two weeks later. I’m thinking that I should go to Best Buy and have the Geek Squad come and set up my router but I know I’ll have to listen to them explain their convoluted tech plan that will ask me to decide whether to get a one visit deal or buy a year subscription…and I know one visit will not fix all my loose ends. And it makes me wonder if that is the reason why computers intentionally aren’t made to fix things.

Oh, by the way, I’m sitting here writing all this down with my Microsoft Word, and now I find that I am unable to save what I’ve written because I don’t have a subscription to Word any more. I guess my free time is over. God, don’t you love it? You can’t even buy a computer with a simple word processor in it without having to pay a yearly fee to use it. Next thing you know somebody will figure out how to put a chip under your skin that measures how many breaths you take so they can charge you for the air you breathe.

Dear Lord, if reincarnation is real please let me go to a world that is either before computers or way beyond computers. Or better yet, where computers and routers and extenders actually use a computer so they can work together.

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