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| Nu Entertainment Productions |
| Nu Magazine |
Once again, I will soon be facing the daunting task of buying a new
computer. As many of you know, this is often a long drawn-out
experience, much like buying a car, but with far fewer cup-holders.
And once you finally acquire your new model, the course of events is
similar to having bought a gigantic pet turtle. You're really excited
when you first get it home, but after you play with it for a little while,
you say "Is this all it does?”, then you lose interest and go back to
watching ESPN. There are so many things to consider for this major
purchase. How much RAM should I get? What the heck is RAM
anyway? Should I get some EWE to keep it company? Will my CPU
be powerful enough to let me play Freecell anytime I want? What
about Pong? If I post videos on YouTube of myself doing bad
impersonations of cheesy 1980s movies, will people watch them and
leave lots of comments in broken misspelled English?
It would help if I knew more about how computers actually work. I
know a heck of a lot more about how they DON'T work. For
example, I know that you should never touch anything or click
anywhere on the screen. If you do, you will be bombarded with useful
information, such as "The exception unknown software exception
(0xc0000659) occurred in the application at location 0x0f7e00b0. "
When I see this, I can't help but think to myself, "Dang! How foolish
of me! All I meant to do was run a program in accordance with its
intended use, but instead I idiotically clicked my
computer. As many of you know, this is often a long drawn-out
experience, much like buying a car, but with far fewer cup-holders.
And once you finally acquire your new model, the course of events is
similar to having bought a gigantic pet turtle. You're really excited
when you first get it home, but after you play with it for a little while,
you say "Is this all it does?”, then you lose interest and go back to
watching ESPN. There are so many things to consider for this major
purchase. How much RAM should I get? What the heck is RAM
anyway? Should I get some EWE to keep it company? Will my CPU
be powerful enough to let me play Freecell anytime I want? What
about Pong? If I post videos on YouTube of myself doing bad
impersonations of cheesy 1980s movies, will people watch them and
leave lots of comments in broken misspelled English?
It would help if I knew more about how computers actually work. I
know a heck of a lot more about how they DON'T work. For
example, I know that you should never touch anything or click
anywhere on the screen. If you do, you will be bombarded with useful
information, such as "The exception unknown software exception
(0xc0000659) occurred in the application at location 0x0f7e00b0. "
When I see this, I can't help but think to myself, "Dang! How foolish
of me! All I meant to do was run a program in accordance with its
intended use, but instead I idiotically clicked my
mouse, triggering a whole bunch of exception unknown exceptions!! I should've known better!"
It's staggering to me that in our modern world, which is run almost entirely by machines and small yapping dogs, computers
are still quite Mesozoic when it comes to self-diagnosis. So many machines can now easily tell their owners not only what's
wrong, but how to fix it. If a car's engine is not in ideal condition, a "Check Engine" sign lights up on the dashboard. If your
photocopier runs out of paper in Tray 3, the display panel actually tells you "Load Paper in Tray 3". When that happens, you
can actually -- stay with me here -- insert paper into Tray 3, and -- Voila! -- a bucket of hot barbeque chicken wings pops
out. Oops…I mean, the photocopier becomes happy again and continues making copies of your favorite Dilbert cartoon.
But when my computer tells me "Invalid access to memory location (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80A705E6)", what
exactly am I supposed to do? It tells me this like I am personally responsible for preventing the computer from properly
reading the memory. As if there is a tiny little gladiator inside the hardware guarding the RAM chips, and when my software
got too close, little Pentius Maximus assumed a warrior stance and declared "They may take our lives, but they'll never take
OUR MEMORY!!!" It's not like the front of my computer tower contains a giant flashing red button labeled "0x80A705E6"
that I can just push and make everything work magically again. Loosely translated, I believe this message is the program
writer's way of saying "I could only make this program work 75% of the time, and I decided that was good enough. Through
no fault of your own, you have now ventured into the remaining 25%. I couldn't figure this part out, so hopefully you can. If
so, email me and I'll send you a free T-shirt."
Computers are so prevalent now, I'm afraid the error-message nonsense is going to begin to spread to other machines.
Imagine someday having your dishwasher yelling at you "Rinse Cycle was unable to clean your New York Knicks coffee mug
due to failure in Sector QQ005. You will need to wash it again." Then the microwave starts barking: "We're sorry, but your
Hot Pocket has performed an illegal operation and will cease to exist. Please seek another source of lunch." On second
thought, maybe I don’t need a new computer – maybe I will just get a pet turtle. Sure, it may snap at me and draw blood, but
at least a turtle will never tell me I need to restart it in order to finish installing updates.
-DAVE SHEEHAN
It's staggering to me that in our modern world, which is run almost entirely by machines and small yapping dogs, computers
are still quite Mesozoic when it comes to self-diagnosis. So many machines can now easily tell their owners not only what's
wrong, but how to fix it. If a car's engine is not in ideal condition, a "Check Engine" sign lights up on the dashboard. If your
photocopier runs out of paper in Tray 3, the display panel actually tells you "Load Paper in Tray 3". When that happens, you
can actually -- stay with me here -- insert paper into Tray 3, and -- Voila! -- a bucket of hot barbeque chicken wings pops
out. Oops…I mean, the photocopier becomes happy again and continues making copies of your favorite Dilbert cartoon.
But when my computer tells me "Invalid access to memory location (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80A705E6)", what
exactly am I supposed to do? It tells me this like I am personally responsible for preventing the computer from properly
reading the memory. As if there is a tiny little gladiator inside the hardware guarding the RAM chips, and when my software
got too close, little Pentius Maximus assumed a warrior stance and declared "They may take our lives, but they'll never take
OUR MEMORY!!!" It's not like the front of my computer tower contains a giant flashing red button labeled "0x80A705E6"
that I can just push and make everything work magically again. Loosely translated, I believe this message is the program
writer's way of saying "I could only make this program work 75% of the time, and I decided that was good enough. Through
no fault of your own, you have now ventured into the remaining 25%. I couldn't figure this part out, so hopefully you can. If
so, email me and I'll send you a free T-shirt."
Computers are so prevalent now, I'm afraid the error-message nonsense is going to begin to spread to other machines.
Imagine someday having your dishwasher yelling at you "Rinse Cycle was unable to clean your New York Knicks coffee mug
due to failure in Sector QQ005. You will need to wash it again." Then the microwave starts barking: "We're sorry, but your
Hot Pocket has performed an illegal operation and will cease to exist. Please seek another source of lunch." On second
thought, maybe I don’t need a new computer – maybe I will just get a pet turtle. Sure, it may snap at me and draw blood, but
at least a turtle will never tell me I need to restart it in order to finish installing updates.
-DAVE SHEEHAN
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