"Breaking Things" Day
May. 29th, 2007 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnMy first Memorial Day weekend in America was spent alone, indoors hiding from the volcanic heat outside, with a giant fan next to my desk. I'd previously asked what the holiday was about and nobody seemed to be able to remember, though it seems to be roughly equivalent to Remembrance Day in Britain (ironically enough). The long weekend passed very quickly as I tried not to think about "working" on the various projects that I have going at the moment, instead going on TV Links (which I'm absolutely addicted to now - more on that at a later date) and occasionally getting up to cook something.
The worst bit of it is that now that Whitney's out of the house, everything electronic has decided to turn on me at once. It's like what happens at my parent's house when I'm not around to fix things. The problems started exactly at the beginning of the weekend, when I got up to leave work and my space bar fell off. And as it's on a laptop, trying to put it back on is a fiddly task normally never seen outside an Angry Man sketch from Chewin' the Fat. There are two little plastic hooks that have to lock in to each other, a task only made possible by pulling the outer one apart with your teeth and one hand to get the millimetre of room required to slot the other one in between it with your other hand. And then it all has to be hooked on to the base of the keyboard, hit down until it stays, and the key replaced on top of them, hoping that they'll all fit together again. And it's almost worked - the space bar now produces a space as long as I don't hit the very edge of it with my right thumb. Which, coincidentally, is exactly the place that I've ingrained my brain into hitting it on my old desktop keyboard because none of the rest of it worked.
The next problem was the suicide of the oven. And I use that word very carefully. I got home on Friday night to find that it had been beeping insistently for any time up to most of the day, and it wouldn't stop no matter how many times I cancelled its meaningless "F7" error code. I found out later in the weekend that the "bake" and "broil" buttons were stuck, and the oven was continually trying to turn itself on at immense heat, giving the error as a safeguard. This is quite hurtful in a way - does it not seem to you that the oven was actively trying to kill itself rather than be used by me ever again?
My phone is another thing that's broken recently. That is, it still works - I can talk to people over it, and that's all I require of a phone. I noticed that the speakerphone had stopped working the other week, but I didn't see that as a massive problem. Now it's given up ringing - or, as I pointed out to Whitney, "It doesn't ring. It's not that I'm not listening to it, it's on the desk here in front of me, it doesn't make a sound when you call me. I don't need to change the volume, my volume is fine, it doesn't ring. It's right next to me, nothing happened to it, it doesn't ring, its ring isn't working, it does not ring." Just to make that clear. But it always seems to work when she previously warns me that she's about to call over IM, so it's clearly evil as well as insane.
And the Dave Gorman book I ordered from Amazon about a week and a half ago still hasn't arrived. This isn't a huge problem in itself because I still have a good fifty pages of Jeremy Clarkson shouting about foreigners to keep me going on the train, but I'm starting to wonder where it's gone.
The worst bit of it is that now that Whitney's out of the house, everything electronic has decided to turn on me at once. It's like what happens at my parent's house when I'm not around to fix things. The problems started exactly at the beginning of the weekend, when I got up to leave work and my space bar fell off. And as it's on a laptop, trying to put it back on is a fiddly task normally never seen outside an Angry Man sketch from Chewin' the Fat. There are two little plastic hooks that have to lock in to each other, a task only made possible by pulling the outer one apart with your teeth and one hand to get the millimetre of room required to slot the other one in between it with your other hand. And then it all has to be hooked on to the base of the keyboard, hit down until it stays, and the key replaced on top of them, hoping that they'll all fit together again. And it's almost worked - the space bar now produces a space as long as I don't hit the very edge of it with my right thumb. Which, coincidentally, is exactly the place that I've ingrained my brain into hitting it on my old desktop keyboard because none of the rest of it worked.
The next problem was the suicide of the oven. And I use that word very carefully. I got home on Friday night to find that it had been beeping insistently for any time up to most of the day, and it wouldn't stop no matter how many times I cancelled its meaningless "F7" error code. I found out later in the weekend that the "bake" and "broil" buttons were stuck, and the oven was continually trying to turn itself on at immense heat, giving the error as a safeguard. This is quite hurtful in a way - does it not seem to you that the oven was actively trying to kill itself rather than be used by me ever again?
My phone is another thing that's broken recently. That is, it still works - I can talk to people over it, and that's all I require of a phone. I noticed that the speakerphone had stopped working the other week, but I didn't see that as a massive problem. Now it's given up ringing - or, as I pointed out to Whitney, "It doesn't ring. It's not that I'm not listening to it, it's on the desk here in front of me, it doesn't make a sound when you call me. I don't need to change the volume, my volume is fine, it doesn't ring. It's right next to me, nothing happened to it, it doesn't ring, its ring isn't working, it does not ring." Just to make that clear. But it always seems to work when she previously warns me that she's about to call over IM, so it's clearly evil as well as insane.
And the Dave Gorman book I ordered from Amazon about a week and a half ago still hasn't arrived. This isn't a huge problem in itself because I still have a good fifty pages of Jeremy Clarkson shouting about foreigners to keep me going on the train, but I'm starting to wonder where it's gone.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 08:57 pm (UTC)Good to know the oven isn't completely dead...!
And complain to Amazon. When I told Jonny to do that, he got a £3 voucher.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 09:43 pm (UTC)Complaining about the postal service? Deliver the letter yourself. Let's see how far you get with a 28p train ticket.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 08:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 12:18 pm (UTC)Memorial Day is, well, a day for memorials for people who have died during service-- this holiday existed way before WWI and thus before November 11 and what you used to call Remembrance Day and what you will from now on (because you've joined the Borg/ US citizenship) call Veterans' Day. 11/11 is considered for all veterans while Memorial Day is for those who died while in service. No one will smack you for, on Memorial Day, remembering living veterans or veterans who lived through the service but died later. Memorial Day is also the unofficial start of summer. You may now wear white shoes (although you may already have seen white shoes being worn, my mother's generation would never have had that happen). Becuase it's the first long weekend of the unofficial summer, many forget what it's really about because they're so busy driving to the beach or barbeque. My town has a parade on Memorial Day, with the little schoolkids playing in marching bands, etc.
From Boston
Date: 2007-06-04 04:41 pm (UTC)I think it started out as Armistace Day.
Yes, I know that's in November. All of our holidays have moved to Mondays -- shy not slide another a few months?
Re: From Boston
Date: 2007-06-04 08:00 pm (UTC)