There's a reason that I don't work in our Technology Department.
When a computer breaks down (and this happens quite often in the library world), my instinct is to throw the darned thing out the window. Ahhhh, what satisfaction I'd get - the enormous crash as the machine strikes the ground, the shreds of computer organs scattering, useless, across the grass. "There," I'd tell the dead machine. "I showed you!"
Of course, I've never actually done this. I've just imagined doing it. Had I not been control of my emotions, I'd have lost my job (as well as my reputation, much of my personal savings, and perhaps even my freedom) long ago.
But last night my desire to kill the computer was even stronger than usual. This time, the target of my anger was the laptop that we use to show movies to the public. My anger was justified, because the laptop simply refused to run the DVD. It refused. And I had an audience waiting to watch the film (granted, the audience only consisted of four people, but I wanted them to have the opportunity to enjoy the movie). After thirty minutes of trying to direct the computer to play the movie, I did what I should have done in the first place - I restarted it. Finally, the movie played (of course, fifteen minutes later an audience member informed me that the subtitles weren't turned on!).
Lest you think that I was overreacting, bear in mind that this episode had followed another laptop-instigated crisis. Last week, in the middle of a popular new release that was being viewed by twenty-one people, the computer decided that it needed to "automatically install new updates." When I was called into the room by a patient patron, I found that the pop-up window would not close. It warned me that the machine would shut down in seconds. Desperate, I ran to grab the nearest knowledgable staff member (by calling wildly to her across the library), but by the time we rushed back to the meeting room, the laptop had shut itself down. To make matters worse, the DVD did not revert to where it had stopped - leading me to spend even more time fast-forwarding through the scenes until the audience members instructed me to press "play."
Needless to say, the laptop and I seem to have developed a mutual animosity. I realize, though, that I have no choice but to establish a more tolerable relationship with it, since showing movies will remain part of my programming responsibilities for quite some time. Dealing with this machine is just another of those aspects of the job that need to be tolerated - like fixing the copier.
When a computer breaks down (and this happens quite often in the library world), my instinct is to throw the darned thing out the window. Ahhhh, what satisfaction I'd get - the enormous crash as the machine strikes the ground, the shreds of computer organs scattering, useless, across the grass. "There," I'd tell the dead machine. "I showed you!"
Of course, I've never actually done this. I've just imagined doing it. Had I not been control of my emotions, I'd have lost my job (as well as my reputation, much of my personal savings, and perhaps even my freedom) long ago.
But last night my desire to kill the computer was even stronger than usual. This time, the target of my anger was the laptop that we use to show movies to the public. My anger was justified, because the laptop simply refused to run the DVD. It refused. And I had an audience waiting to watch the film (granted, the audience only consisted of four people, but I wanted them to have the opportunity to enjoy the movie). After thirty minutes of trying to direct the computer to play the movie, I did what I should have done in the first place - I restarted it. Finally, the movie played (of course, fifteen minutes later an audience member informed me that the subtitles weren't turned on!).
Lest you think that I was overreacting, bear in mind that this episode had followed another laptop-instigated crisis. Last week, in the middle of a popular new release that was being viewed by twenty-one people, the computer decided that it needed to "automatically install new updates." When I was called into the room by a patient patron, I found that the pop-up window would not close. It warned me that the machine would shut down in seconds. Desperate, I ran to grab the nearest knowledgable staff member (by calling wildly to her across the library), but by the time we rushed back to the meeting room, the laptop had shut itself down. To make matters worse, the DVD did not revert to where it had stopped - leading me to spend even more time fast-forwarding through the scenes until the audience members instructed me to press "play."
Needless to say, the laptop and I seem to have developed a mutual animosity. I realize, though, that I have no choice but to establish a more tolerable relationship with it, since showing movies will remain part of my programming responsibilities for quite some time. Dealing with this machine is just another of those aspects of the job that need to be tolerated - like fixing the copier.
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