Frustration with computers

I just can’t win over here.

poindexter gave me two SCSI CD-ROMs to replace the CD-ROM that died the day I put it in to replace the old double-speed drive. Opening up the case and installing the CD-ROM drive into the external SCSI case isn’t that involved, but it’s still a pain in the ass to keep on opening the case, unscrewing all the screws that hold the rails to the drive, reattaching all the cables and so on.

So first was the old drive. It just stopped reading disks. Then I bought one from eBay. As I mentioned, it died within hours of installation. The motor that opens the tray stopped working, and when I removed the drive from the case today, a cog actually fell right out of it. Into the trash it went. Ten bucks down the drain.

I tried the CD-R next, but the SGI box wouldn’t read disks with it. I don’t know if maybe the instruction set is different for a SCSI CD-ROM as for a SCSI CD-R, so I shrugged and went on to the second drive I got from poindexter.

The Irix installation process requires that every CD in the set be put in the drive before the install starts so that the install program can see what packages are in the CD set, which seems like a boneheaded way to go about it, but whatever. Part of the fun of proprietary Unices is figuring out the utterly obscure puzzles that some moron developer called an installer.

Now, about twenty times of opening the CD tray and closing it again, and reading all the package lists off of each one, now the tray has stopped opening and closing. When I push the eject button, the device makes a horrid buzzing sound for about thirty seconds and stops. So it looks like the CD tray motor on this drive is shot, too.

Have you heard of the people that claim that their body emits an electrical field that destroys electric and electronic devices? Supposedly there is something different in their bioelectric system that causes watches to stop within a few days of being on such a person’s wrist. I used to dismiss those stories as superstitious nonsense, but I’m beginning to turn into a believer. No Windows machine will connect to any network when I’m in the room, no CD-ROM survives contact with me, no device drivers I’ve installed have ever worked, I’ve never seen any OS install run successfully as documented and every piece of software I’ve ever installed has developed a fatal flaw or incompatibility that the developers have claimed never to have seen before.

Either that or the entire technology industry is shot through with shoddy work processes, incompetent workers and dishonest management. Oh, wait, we already know that’s true. Never mind.

PS apparently two years of disuse has broken my Zip drive. I took the disks to a rental computer at a copy shop and sure enough, the disks are good. How did my Zip drive break without my ever trying to use it? Arrrgh.