You know the feeling, you are staring at the computer and it won’t do what you want it to do. You want to pick the monitor up, shake it and say “Wake up to yourself. You are supposed to make my life easier!”
After my experience with Customer Service Experience Part 2, I was ready to get onto the web site to load my diagrams onto my post, Operations Dashboard for a Matrix Organisation, I needed to change them quickly as I did not believe the ones on the post were correct. I was already having problems with the yellow in diagram 3 but diagram 6 was fine the yellow was perfect. I load the new diagrams up and the yellow has turned into a dirty green! It was yellow, it is yellow in power point, it is yellow when I change to GIF file but when I load it up it is dirty green! Why? 
After fidgeting around a bit, I look up support forum, it says delete these files under /include/js. I am a bit wary of deleting files from the server, don’t know what I’m doing. So I delete some files, website still works, ok, load diagrams, still dirty green! I go and delete all the files and you know what is going to happen now, I lost my website after not having for the past 36 hours, just all this script 
. Luckily for me there is an upgrade on the server so all I have to do is patch my wordpress, phew! Ok, it has to work now. Nope. Still dirty green. Defrag and clean my computer. Five hours later (yeah, hadn’t done it for a while), still dirty green. Ok, I’ll try and save under another directory, it’s finally yellow. YEAH! But not the same tone as diagram 2 and all the diagrams have changed size . Who cares, I’ve had it.
The next day I have one more go at it and for the first time diagram 3 has the same tone yellow as diagram 2 but diagram 6 could not get there. But why? I had not done anything different, it just decided to behave for diagram 3, only.
Why do these things happen? I mean I had been working on my website for 4 months and then all of a sudden it decides to have a complex problem. Diagram 3 which has never been the right tone of yellow is now perfect and not for diagram 6 which was the right tone before all of this!
Do I have all this bad feng shui around me at the moment that it is also affecting my computer? Or was I just being too fussy about my yellow?
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Nah, not bad feng shui. It was your computer’s tension sensor picking up on the need to fix a post before anyone saw that it wasn’t right.
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Gee, thanks MaryAlice,
I am glad the computer was thinking of me. And there I was blaming the computer as I believed the computer did not care.
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I have recieved many online comments from my discussion groups to ignore, please enjoy… and do please keep them coming
“Not true. Question is _Do we use computers in a way we are actually supposed to? Something for you to ponder over …enjoy
” SunilB“Hmmm, where did you find out how computers are supposed to work? I can only find out how some people (sales teams) think they should work. And maybe it isn’t the computer, its the software” Spider
“Computers can’t choose to do anything other than what they are programmed to do…” ColinM
“Never personalize computers, they dont like that!” BenediktH
“One day, I see computers thinking the same thing about humans
” SaineshS-
I have to blame somebody, may as well be the computer, it suppose to have no feelings
But 2001 has come and gone…and now close to 2010.
Maybe after MaryAlice’s comment and others, I should be giving thanks to my computer for giving me a stressful day.
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Someone told me that we need to recognize that computers need maintenance just like our cars. You must change your oil periodicallly or your car will die. In the same way we need to schedule time for routine maintenance on our computers.
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It was my 5 hour defrag that gave it away…
I will try and take better care now, I will stop just closing the lid and walking away, I will try to remember to shut down my computer so it can have a rest.
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Usually when mine is bad, it’s just doing what I said and not what I meant. I’ve been a software engineer long enough now to learn that I can be the problem.
But then there is rude PC software that gets in my way and talks back to me all the time and I hate that. They say Mac is polite.
Maybe we need more women writing operating systems to get fresh ideas from a diverse pool of talent on this.
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It would be great to get more women to add more imagination into our work but sometimes there are none.
I went to a data analytics networking event recently. There were 10 women in a room of 80 people. We went further networking to the local next door. I was the only woman that turned up!
Yes would be great but ladies come out and play with me!
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I got worried when you were actually deleting files…
Never delete a file, just rename , that way you can more than likely recover if you have trouble. by renaming it, you will find that the program cant find it and thinks it has been deleted, but you know that by renaming it back to the original name, you can make it reappear. This may not work with certain programs that can recover deleted files automatically, but if you ever have to delete a file. DONT. just put an ending or a start on the filename to make it longer and different.
we like to personify the computers, helps us put up with them.
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Thanks Rod for your concern. I will remember to add a suffix or prefix to my files instead of deleting them.
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I’ve always had a suspicion that there is a “gnome” or computer devil that sits inside my computer and servers and just wait for the perfect moment to throw bizarre problems and errors on me…
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I believe there is a spirit, not a virus, that sits in the internet, wandering around the world and as said before “senses” somebody having a stressful time and then pounces
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Someone has heard you of late ill-treating your computer. Check this out.
http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/feelings/compfeelings.html
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Ah Colleen do I know where you’re coming from here!?!?!?!
I have so had it with computers at the moment being on my third this year! I am considering going “Old School”, Anyone have a steam powered 286 for sale or maybe a tape drive Commodore64???????
Go on Colleen, out the window with it -
Ah… I do remember when I received my PS/2, it was smancy, fancy with it’s little blue eject disk button and I still had to create a menu system for it
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I think the computer wants to test you!
it is the same way when I see all the red numbers on the stock market screen I want to break that screen! But will it do any good? the prices will still keep falling may be even a lil faster after someone breaks the screen inside the stock market !!!!!-
Oh.. please don’t. I can’t sit through another year
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Shush! If it hears you……Be very careful!!!!!!
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more often than not, it is not the computer’s fault. we somtimes forget that we have added too much applications, downloads etc.. that perhaps “hurt” the computer. My advice is to find the root cause why it is behaving this way by turning to some IT support technicians to help take a look at it…
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Yeah Sometimes it is good to throw your Computer out of the Window, just erect a board on the street “beware – helmets are a must for all passersby”
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I can see it now. People walking past buildings with their hard hats on. A laptop landing at their feet in a puff of smoke, then looking around at the occasional laptop being “spirited” out of other office buildings. Somebody having a stressful day, lucky for the sign!
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Sometimes I believe that software companies come out with new versions of their programs because they believe that change in software is inherently good. For the past 10 years I have found each version of Word to be LESS practical than the previous version. Same for SPSS.
It is a shame that the enormous improvements that have occured in hardware have been obscured by this.
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Yes I couldn’t agree with you more. Data Analytics?!! , all the technology in the world but the software engineers control with their requirements.
Nothing is ever easy. My external drive is full so I want to backup on the server, I have this space but am only using it for the blog. I have all these automatic tools that are suppose to do it for me but no, so I have this continually urgent error message on the computer. Now, this so non-IT person has to figure something else out.
I am sure they make it easy for some but hard for everybody else. Put something new and groovy then take something else out that we like using.
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