My superpower
I love that I seem to have this inexplicable power over technology: I can scare it back into behaving properly. It’s almost as if all the pieces of electronic technology in the world share a consciousness that is overly dependent upon me.
What is Steve talking about? Has he finally, truly lost his mind?
You know when you have a problem with your computer or phone or TV remote? You call a friend or family member or coworker to take a look at it. Sometimes, it’s something you just didn’t understand, but sometimes you KNOW something’s wrong. When people call me over to take a look at their technology being weird, my presence seems to make things work correctly. Many times, if I’m talking to somebody about a problem, the mere suggestion that I could come over seems to “scare” the device into behaving. This happens a lot with SVN at work. And it’s the norm when troubleshooting my family’s computer problems.
Today, for example, I had trouble with the Facebook iPhone app. More trouble than usual. All day today, I couldn’t actually use the app at all. Every time I tried to view my notifications, it would just crash. Very frustrating. Especially coming from an app that I EXPECT to frustrate me. Toward the end of the day, I decided to try using the website on my phone, and for once, it worked really well! So well, that I turned to my friend to proclaim: “The Facebook app sucks so much that I might just delete it and use the website from now on”. I launched the app one more time to make sure that it was still being a problem. It was, so that sealed the deal: website from now on.
A few hours later, I’m cleaning out all my notifications before going to bed. I launch the FB app out of habit, and voila! Problem solved. The app works fine now. Why now? I can’t be sure. But it was literally crashing all day instead of showing me my notifications, and viewing them on the website worked but didn’t solve the problem with the app. It seems that it was only after threatening never to use it again, that the app started working properly.
Yes, my electrical minions, bow before me for I am your god! Fear my wrath!
