20060628   

Michael considered fate at 15:03   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

Spring turns the corner and runs smack dab into Summer. They fall down, but laugh heartily and get back up again, dust themselves off, and have a good chuckle about that socially-inept guy they know down the street Winter. They aren't the nicest guys, Spring and Summer..

So it's no real surprise that it's somehow managing to be both hot and stickily humid as well as overcast and drizzly. In the perfect world, the small Inconveniences of life would stop there - I'd otherwise be happy, satiated, productive, and sane.

Unfortunately the A/C unit in my lab has shit the bed (or more exactly shit on two or three circuit breakers and made me lose my work twice). The resulting swim through a tangled pile of electric cords and surge-strips under the desks (banging my head good on the metal frame) found a disconcertingly high amount of heat seeping out of the extension cord, the power strip, yes in fact out of everything down there that was carrying any sort of voltage. Disconcertingly is perhaps not the most clear of terms so let me put it this way: I would hesitate to hold onto one of these wires tightly for more than ten seconds or so. If you have a completely electrician-free mind you might not know that this is patently a Bad Thing(tm).

So having given up on the A/C unit, I turn to the small computer I am now forced to use. Only yesterday I was sitting in front of 445 square inches of screen real estate being what I would classify as "somewhat productive" (certainly a wonderful thing to be as a graduate student, for better than, say, "completely slothlike"). Today I am reduced to almost a third of that and my fingers (admittedly small for an adult) must squeeze together and jockey for position in order to manage any sort of discernible english on this horrifically bad keyboard.

Why? With new hardware comes setup costs and one of those costs is waiting for the new hardware to be setup. This after a few hours of struggling with my previous machine's configuration to get dual-headed support up and running, only to blow a fuse and come in today to find the machine completely stripped from my hands.. without even a goodbye! Soon, though, giant behemoth machines will follow. Huge multi-core, electricity sucking, monsters with four gigs of RAM (enough to choke a horse, as my father would say) and graphics cards that, themselves alone, require enough electricity to support a small town in China. No doubt these beasts will, along with the mini-fridge and other consumers, only lead to more stress on the already taxed system. An electricity fire will result, my humus and carrots will be lost (travesty!) and my thesis will be washed down river with the rest of the debris by a firehydrant tsunami. City workers will tell me where I can't go to recover my charred, melted, red swingline stapler.

As if someone were actually behind this scene - fingers pulling lightly at the strings, chuckling quietly to him or herself, and generally making my life more uncomplainably miserable (you know, in that way of piling up many small inconsequential inconveniences) - there is more. Upon arrival today I find a band (and not a very good one, at that) jamming away outside our windows. The same windows that are crammed with a giant broken A/C unit and therefore provide little if any airflow. And although the air might not be moving quickly, the noise certainly is and thus here I am enjoying a nice sit in a pool of my own sweat (have you ever known a bath more completely?) as I cringe at the metallic high-hat as it's progeny, wave after wave, waft through the grating in quick staccato puffs, sharp like a cheddar but hurty, like chewing aluminum foil with a mouth full of dental fillings.

I'm not done. There is a fly. Nothing big; a normal housewife of a fly with it's very normal looking wings (unspotted, unadorned with fanciful art). It buzzes softly about, though specifically near me only, and on occasion it lands on my screen, on my arm, on my mouse, or on the tiny useless keyboard. No doubt it's disease ridden and will happily share it's findings with me if I wish to spread it out, butter-like, on the desktop. Knowingly, I just watch it - eyes narrowed to slits. It rubs it's two front legs together when it looks at me. Dr. Frankenstein, I presume?

Spring shakes Summer's hand with a smile. They sit merrily for a time, conspiring, complaining about their siblings - those aloof and somewhat morose Fall and Winter fellows.. how far off they now seem in all their staid glory. When they finally part ways, it gets hotter.