Aaarghhh...computers!

Please indulge me a moment while I complain about the computers in my life.

For all the failings that people have (myself included of course), I wonder- maybe it's just me, but I find computers more unreliable than people. However hard it may to explain to people what it is you want, with a computer it's harder because it has no real intelligence, but it has the illusion of one, which makes me frustrated. I wonder why the computer isn't doing what I'm asking it to do- well, because the computer doeesn't "know" what I'm asking to do, of course. But there are so many differant variables at work in a computer at the same time that although a computer is not a person, it can still be unpredictable. What works one time doesn't work the next.

But the worst thing is that if I try to do a document on more than one computer, invariably, the formatting gets messed up. Like when I do these zines I've been doing, or documents at work. I've lost count of how many times I've had to readjust the typeface, the text size, the spacing...in one thing I wanted to present a poem creatively on the page, with diferant typefaces and creative spacing....what a nightmare that was.

I suppose a computer is still an improvement on the old fashioned typewriter. I think the first person I heard swearing was my dad, typing out his physics textbooks, as he realized he'd made a mistake and would have to go back and redo a section. His swearwords were in French, but since he was classically educated they weren't the ones you'd expect- the ones having to do with the Catholic mass. Funny, Quebecois swearwords are about religion, while English ones are mostly about sex and bodily functions. No doubt many people have done cultural studies theses on such matters....