Taking a Powder
How I finally learned to walk away from >> error_messages <<
I absolutely love digital technology. I really do.
And I absolutely hate digital technology. I always have.
Why?
Let’s put it this way: If you want to see someone take on the cognitive ability of an acid-tripping wart hog, present me with even the most elementary technical glitch. Then sit back, fasten your seat belt and watch me go from “zero to batshit loonball” once the very first attempt to fix the digital conundrum fails …
… and, oh yes, it always fails.
Case in point: the day my Hewlett-Packard printer decided to go belly up, mere hours before my editor wanted the hard-copy pages of a job I’d been working on, a profile of a New Age rabbi known to channel his spirit guides in Yiddish.
I tried everything I knew, which in my case was limited to:
1. Restart the printer.
2. Unplug the printer.
3. Restart the computer.
4. Unplug the computer.
5. Fight the urge to knee Hewlett-Packard’s CEO square in the pills.
The computer kept hitting me with the same error message:
SYSTEM ALERT — MULTI-STAGE FAULT CASCADE INITIATED
References: 49.3F.07A-X / FW-SYNC-12 / I/O-NEG-04 / MEDIA-PATH-UNDEF
>> Anomaly detected during job intake; operations suspended pending review. <<
>> Host parameters and firmware mismatch cannot resolve automatically. <<
Given my seething frustration, however, this is what my brain perceived:
>> Printer encountered a #@!% problem while doing the very basic task you asked it to do. Repeating the same @#%! steps ad nauseum will not magically fix it. <<
>> Yes, the printer is online. No, it is not printing. Like duh, Heisenberg. These two facts can coexist, despite how %!@# confusing that seems to be for such a @#%! clueless meat puppet. <<
For my health – and for the safety of everyone in my Zip code – I got up, walked around the block and did the first intelligent thing that day: call my buddy Ron.
A dear friend I’d met in our local bike club, Ron was a brilliant mechanical engineer, one who’d once worked for … wait for it … a printer manufacturer.
He answered on the second ring.
“What’s up, Lar?”
“I need help.”
“I’m listening,” he said.
“It’s my damn printer. I can’t figure out – ”
“Hold on. I’ll be right over.”
That was Ron, dropping everything at a moment’s notice to help out.
About 30 minutes after fiddling with the hardware – I can’t even begin to describe what high-tech shenanigans he tried – Ron stepped back, pursed his lips and said, “Lemme get my printer.”
“You brought your own?”
A few minutes later, Ron connected his own machine and fired it up. Just like that, page after page of my chakra-balancing-rabbi story began to churn out of his printer … a printer that just happened to be the very same HP make and model as my own.
“Why the hell does yours work and not mine?” I asked in frustration.
“Beats me,” he said. “But at least now we know it’s your printer, not your MacBook.”
“You think maybe I overwatered it?” I deadpanned.
Ron glanced at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted a third ear out of my forehead, recovering enough to say, “Uh .... Renee and I are having lunch at noon,” referring to his girlfriend. “It’s her birthday. I gotta bounce. But we’ll figure this out.”
I walked Ron out to his car and thanked him for his efforts before he drove off.
I was now all alone, hamstrung with this digital mystery, just like the dozens of others that had mocked me over the previous decade. Sure, Ron said he’d return later, but at the moment I felt completely impotent, my ego once again eviscerated by some digital glitch. Unable to tamp down my growing frustration, I took another walk around the block, trying to cool down.
The 10-minute “time-out” (a term normally associated with petulant toddlers) didn’t help. Rather, the little stroll was about as effective as extinguishing a campfire with a bucket of jet fuel. With every step, I could feel my frustration growing like a mushroom cloud. By the time I returned home, that frustration had boiled over into seething anger.
A more self-aware person would’ve chilled out, awaiting Ron’s return. Not me.
Jaw clenched and blood pressure now in the red zone, I opened my document, checked my printer’s cable connection and tried cranking out a sample page. The screen immediately hit me with that same error message.
My field of vision narrowed until the entire universe became nothing more than those awful lines of code, idiotic gibberish that seemed to scoff at my inability to fix this problem … and to fix every single tech snafu over the years.
I guess you can never plan on those infrequent times when your mood goes from “slightly irked” to “Chernobyl.” The very rare meltdowns seem to manifest on their own … which is exactly what happened as my gaze shifted between my HP and that error message.
“That’s it,” I muttered. “We’re done here.”
To an outside observer, I looked like any other happy-go-lucky schmo hunting for a book online or catching up on the day’s news. But by then, perhaps in order to avoid a Blue Cross–funded vacation to the local nut farm, I became the outside observer, mentally checking out.
I found myself in the far corner of my room, observing a tall, dark-haired 40-something as he sat, head slightly bowed, clenching and unclenching his fists, before he stood and unplugged his printer. I took in his surprisingly slow, measured gait as he headed toward the back porch, cradling his printer like he was carrying a frightened puppy. Reaching his destination, he halted, glanced down at the printer, slowly exhaling once, then twice. And I noticed, with some oddly detached interest, as the tall fellow raised his printer over his head … and then brought it down like an outdoorsman splitting firewood with his axe, smashing it onto the concrete floor.
It was supposed to feel good.
It didn’t.
I closed my eyes at the moment of impact, hearing the explosive crack as the plastic hardware shattered into a warped husk. A cloud of black toner plumed upward, filling my nostrils with the pungent, antiseptic stink of Silicon Valley. As the dark powder settled over and around me, I sensed that the printer had somehow gotten in a final error message (>> @#&%! you! <<) at the moment of its demise.
I headed to the bathroom to wash off the toner, which had coated my left hand and a good portion of my forearm. There, the mirror revealed that the black powder had also coated most of my face. As I pondered the enraged buffoon (a dead ringer for an Appalachian coal miner) staring back at me, I was surprised to find myself, after all this, actually suppressing a giggle.
Maybe it was the comical coal miner in the mirror. Maybe it was the adrenaline dump. Or perhaps my “toddler overload” had just naturally run its course. For whatever reason, I did a complete 180 and began to relax … chill out … unclench my fists … pause. My friend Ron would return sooner than later, so what was the problem?
I snatched a Heineken from the fridge, grabbed a dog-eared copy of “The Da Vinci Code” and headed out back. Ignoring the twisted corpse of my printer – and still coated in Hewlett-Packard Blackface™ – I calmly took in the recently watered lawn, the marigolds and azaleas sprouting in all their pastel glory, and the inviting hammock that swung ever so slightly back and forth in the balmy mid-morning breeze.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Repeat.
Yes, by golly, it was becoming a good day, after all.
I hopped into that hammock and, black toner still raining down from my hair and eyebrows, took a swig of the beer and cracked open the best-seller.
I awakened from a glorious nap about an hour later to the gravelly voice of Mr. Bimbaum, the pushy, ever-curious retiree as he peered at me from his side of the cinder-block wall.
“You okay?” he barked.
“Oh, just hunky-dory,” I said, smiling through blackened lips and blinking printer toner out of my eyes.
“You sure?”
“Yup.”
“Can I get you anything? Uh … like a wash rag?”
Here’s what Mr. Bimbaum must’ve seen from his side of the backyard wall: a relaxed, toner-faced whack-job responding to his concern by raising his Heineken in a toast of good cheer. “No siree. I’m better than ever.”
Shaking his head in befuddlement, my neighbor backed away ... slowly.
Rather than slip back into Snooze Central, I rolled out of the hammock, now sprinkled here and there with printer fairy dust, and headed to the bedroom to grab a change of clothes and hit the shower. There, I spotted Ron’s printer sitting on my desk, waiting for its tech-friendly owner.
Huh, what are the odds? I thought to myself as I approached his printer. Ron, since when are you a basketball fan?
My friend enjoyed many things: cycling, live jazz fusion, the occasional prank, a nice meal at Applebee’s … but he hated basketball, choosing a full, active lifestyle over hours watching multimillionaire pituitary cases run around in their shorts.
Come to think of it, Ron hated all spectator sports.
Why, then, did his printer display an L.A. Lakers logo, the exact same L.A. Lakers logo as the one on mine?
Then it dawned on me …
Years after the dust (or, in my case, the toner) settled, I still ponder why I fly off the handle at the first sign of a digital dead-end.
For starters, I’ve always believed that computer technology was supposed to be intuitive and seamless. When it isn’t, I feel betrayed by the corporate eggheads continually selling us all a bill of goods. And I take that personally.
Couple that with the cognitive overload caused by tiny silicon chips spewing out cryptic error messages, and I wind up feeling incompetent, stupid, powerless and utterly dependent on others. Blend all of these factors into the same cauldron, and it creates a bitter goulash that brings out my inner toddler.
Ron, being Ron, laughed when I told him that I’d destroyed his printer. “At least I hope it was cathartic,” he said.
“Dude, I’m really sorry,” I said. “I just – ”
“Forget about it,” he added. “I’ll upgrade my printer and give you the receipt. You want me to buy two?”
“Much appreciated.”
“And, Lar.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m just grateful we don’t drive the same car.”
SOFTWARE UPDATE! READ AT ONCE!
References: 49.3F.07A-X / FW-SYNC-12 / I/O-NEG-04 / MEDIA-PATH-UNDEF
>> System detects a HUGE thank you for text-based assistance by Rick Lewis, Kathy Ayers, Rachel Parker and Neha Patel, all bilaterally symmetrical, carbon-based entities populating our wonderful writing community, Write Hearted. <<
♥ Few people can make toner, rage, and personal growth coexist this gracefully. I’ll never look at an error message, or a hammock, the same way again. Hilarity ensues.
Larry, this made me laugh out loud and wince in recognition. As someone who has absolutely fantasized about doing exactly this in moments of peak tech frustration, I have to admit I sort of admire that you actually went through with it. There really is nothing quite as maddening as failed technology at the exact moment you need it most, and you captured that helpless, toddler-on-the-floor feeling so perfectly. And that final line about the car—chef’s kiss. Ron truly sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime friend!