Computer Vampires

01/11/2010

Computer Vampires

I am now thoroughly convinced that computers are out for blood. All those times hen people call me up and say, “Hey fix this”, and it magically starts working -- this may seem like some great and wonderful thing. Really, what I’m thinking is, “Oh shit, I’m going to pay for this later.
You know which problems I’m talking about. Little, annoying, convoluted yet obscure problems that only crop up when the moon is full, Jupiter is in retrograde, and Mars is in alignment with a thousand sword-swallowing virgins (who happen to be dancing on their right foot during the autumnal equinox). The problems that disappear as quickly as they materialize reflect, at the very least, the complex conditions of their birth.

Perhaps it is because of this complexity that these same problems scatter away like a house of cards when a toothpick is dropped from the Empire State Building. Perhaps it is some kind of technological “Midas Touch”, an aura of order that forces everything back into proper alignment.

Of course, there is another possibility: Computer Vampires. That’s right, little blood-sucking gremlins that extract their pound of flesh. It may sound like nonsense to you (and the proof of their existence may be elusive), but when you feel the nasty bite of a late-night server outage, where absolutely nothing goes right and you only have about twenty-three minutes until everything is supposed to be back up and operational, you will believe.

It’s moments like these in which this supposed “Midas Touch” is non-existent, when all hope seems to be lost and you have to fight tooth-and-nail to get everything working properly. The computer vampires save it all up for these moments when their bite is the most stinging.

So the next time you have a problem and it gets miraculous better, beware. There are fundamental rules to this technological universe: cause and effect, and computer vampires.