Rage Against the Machine, pt. 6 "Mishaps"

In my RATM series, I've chronicled my love/hate relationship with technology. In this latest installment, I'll recount our season of technology mishaps. It all started when I cracked Jennifer's Mac screen. Fletch grabbed for the plug and as I quickly yanked it away, it fell from my small girl hands and onto the computer screen. Fletch was involved in the next mishap as well. Jennifer had her purse teetering on the edge of the kitchen counter. His extremely curious nature made him reach for it, pulling the purse off the counter and her phone and iPod touch into the dog's water bowl. It gets worse.

As I walked through the door after attending a Redskins game (which they lost - no big surprise!), Jennifer had the look of dread on her face. "I've got some bad news. The TV blew up!" I looked at the blank black screen and hung my head. After five years (a short lifespan for a TV) my first generation plasma went dark-permanently. Show's over.

A few days later my trusty Windows XP laptop started acting funny. It wouldn't boot up. While it lived much longer than expected, the end was very sudden. There were no signs of problems. It went from working to not in a matter of a few hours. It must have caught a virus! Ha, pun intended.

To add insult to injury, the home theater computer, the one that started the rage, died again. I say again because the replacement motherboard crashed and burned. That computer was jinxed. I wasn't going to spend another $300 to fix it. Our reason for buying the HTPC was to save money by getting rid of cable TV. Turns out we've spent nearly the amount we would have spent on cable TV fixing and maintaining the computer. Stupid technology.

Everything worked out in the end. We got the Mac screen repaired. Jennifer successfully dried out her phone using rice. However she wasn't as successful with the iPod Touch. The screen was permanently damaged so we replaced it for half price. We bought a bigger and better TV. We had a 50" Vizio plasma and upgraded to a 55" Samsung LCD. I replaced my laptop with a sweet Gateway netbook. And we sucked it up and subscribed to cable television (no premium channels though). Hello high def on every channel!

Here's hoping the tech mishaps are behind us. They have to be since we've replaced everything. :)