I’m picking up a pattern that seems to emerge whenever I buy something electronic:
- I get excited.
- I buy the damned thing.
- It doesn’t work like it’s supposed to.
- I read the manual and make sure I’m doing everything correctly.
- It still doesn’t work.
- Time passes.
- Everything starts to work, and I can’t break it even if I try.
I’ve come to call this the “theory of time served”. I might have talked about this before, but there’s no archive, so there’s a refresher for you. Am I just too dense to figure out simple things? Did my electronics training cause me to make things more complicated than they are? Is there some karmic force at work here? I don’t know, but these days when something doesn’t work right out of the box, I give it a few days before I get upset.
Today’s lesson in patience is the Rio One MP3 player. I had a Rio 300 from a long time ago, but it doesn’t work with the Mac and it has this annoying habit of resetting at the slightest bump, which is a bit of an issue if you only use it while running. I’d love to lay down the cash for an iPod, but since music players only last about 6 months before I shred them to semi-or-non working bits, I can’t justify the expense for what for me would end up to be a disposable toy. On the bright side with this purchase is that I have a spare flash card and the shop I got it from has a “straight exchage” extended warranty, which is the only time I’ve seen an extended warranty that I know will save me money. Still, when you see warnings like this, you know it’s going to be a bumpy ride…
The theory of time served is something I’ve learned to live with, but it’s not like I have any time to serve right now. I think I’m supposed to have AngelA’s website done tomorrow, which by my current time estimate means that I’ll have about 1 hour to do all the stylesheets. Good thing I bought that book eh? Most of the coding’s done, but it’s the kind of done that will have to be re-done after examining the performance of the apps… I’ll rant more tomorrow when I launch the thing.
Oh yeah, here’s the Ikea riddle – how does a $4.95 lamp lead to a $143 bill at the checkout? Argh.