The Intelligence Estimate

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this entire post comes out as nothing more than a series of squiggles and dashes. Frankly me and technology aren't getting along for some reason. That's right ALL of technology. Anything more advanced than an inclined plane is rebelling against my every command. And make no mistake, I make a lot of commands!

Last night I decided to re-start a project I was doing for a friend transferring tapes to CD. Now, I don't expect this all to make a lot of sense. In fact I fully expect to descend into tech babble at any minute. But rest assured the thesis statement is always: I AM BEING SCREWED!

Meanwhile, back in the story: I have the original files from the tapes stored on my old computer which we call speedy. At the time we got that computer it was an accurate name. Now it's more of a joke. But that's really a different story. I was attempting to edit the sound files from my laptop (which I call Marvin...don't ask) via my wireless network. First I could not get the files to import from Speedy to Marvin. I had to go into Speedy and change the file type to get Marvin to recognize the files.

Then I edited them on Marvin and saved them back to Speedy to keep all the files in one location. Then I attempted to import the newly edited files back into Marvin and make a CD out of them. This is when I discovered that some of the files did not transfer correctly and I had to re-edit them. Once I got that problem ironed out then iTunes decided that it wasn't going to let me include the name or album title on any of the tracks I imported. After struggling with that problem for awhile iTunes then decided that it didn't want me to be able to arrange the tracks in the order that I wanted them burned onto CD. Keep in mind it would allow me to do all of these things to ANY OTHER FILE in iTunes, just not the ones I needed. It's hard not to take that personally.

At some point both computers crashed and I had to restart both of them. I then decided that I needed to run my spyware program on Marvin to make sure all of this was just a fluke and not a spyware attack. When I attempted to run the spyware program Vista assured me that the spyware license was out of date and I needed to purchase a new license for the program. I had been meaning to do this anyway so I got out my credit card and charged ahead. Despite the fact that I had twice as much money in my account as was necessary for the purchase (at least according to my online banker, who I should have been starting to doubt at this point but I was simply reduced to blind rage at this point and not paranoid frenzy. That would come later) the card got rejected. TWICE!

I decided that it was best to go to bed and cut my losses. But the losses followed me.

Jen got up at 5 a.m. to go to work. At that point I decided to set my alarm so I could get to work on time as well. However, when I went to set my alarm I hit the inappropriately named "SLEEP" button. That button turns on the radio for no less than an hour for people who think, "I could go to sleep if only it were LOUDER!" Honestly, who are these people? I mean, sure, people occasionally use my one man show as an aural cure for insomnia, but why institutionalize it in my radio? And the real kicker is that there is no way to turn off th sleep timer. NONE. You're just stuck with it for an hour unless you unplug the radio, which I did.

I went back to iTunes again today to try to add the album and artist names to the track that I FINALLY was able to import. No go. Again, it would allow me to change that information on any file EXCEPT THE ONES I NEEDED TO!

I got to work today and I checked my account balance online to see if I could afford a purchase I was considering. When I did I noticed that all the money I had in there last night was missing today. This is due to an online account transfer from checking to my savings of $30. It should be mentioned at this point that I did not authorize this transfer and I was completely unaware it was going to happen. I can find no precedent for it in any of the bank records and no authorization for it to happen.

Well, I only had 20 some dollars in my savings account so the online banker, realizing I have overdraft protection, withdrew $10 from my savings and deposited it into my checking so it could turn around and deposit all $30 into my savings. Well, when I saw that I had $0 in my checking account I immediately went into my savings account and transferred $40 back into checking...and then the bank collapsed under the weight of its own psychotic redundancy.

When the machines become sentient (sometime next week by the look of it) they're going to be pissed at all the years of yelling and swearing they've had to endure at the hands of people like me. I do not expect them to be benevolent overlords. I'm going to go live in a cave until this whole mess blows over.

Labels: Banking, Computer Problems, iTunes, Machines