June 26, 2007

I Should Stick with Carbon-Based Things

Technology has never much cared for me. I've always had the worst luck with anything computer-based. LL is constantly amazed at how things that work for everybody else just stop working when I get too close to them.

In the past two days, I have been the short-term owner of two MP3 players. Neither of them has worked. I bought one today that, when I got it home, wouldn't even let me load files onto it, coming back with an endless stream of "error at insertion" messages.

I would love to have a simple, 2GB MP3 player that I could simply plug into a USB port, load about 6 hours worth of music onto, and have it play the list randomly. I don't want anything fancy. I don't want portable video or a satellite uplink that lets me track the positions of enemy artillery. Unfortunately, it seems that no self-respecting MP3 player wants to be my pet.

I'm very good with living things. Wild animals like me and let me take photographs of them, even when nobody else can. I'm very good at culturing microorganisms and identifying fungi. In five years of hunting mushrooms and photographic subjects in the Florida woods, I've had numerous encounters with poisonous snakes, alligators, and other potentially dangerous animals and come away unscathed, often with photographs showing incredible detail of the interiors of their nasal cavities.

Put me near a computer, though, and the sparks soon fly... sometimes literally.

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