Comment permalink

John Lapsley

I rise and shine for the week’s last workday, virtuous, and ready to save the world. I marmalade my toast, pour my coffee, switch on the computer to imbibe my email — and discover  yet again I’ve been visited by that appalling do-gooder, Mr Microsoft Update.

Many of you are familiar with Mr Update. This geezer is a collective of software programmers who believe they’re Santa Claus. Mr Update traverses the world by night, shimmying down the chimneys of millions to stuff their computers full of software surprises. I’m not sure what night of the week his reindeer land on your roof, but mine come on Fridays.

I was taught to leave out carrots and a drink for Santa, but I’m considering arsenic for Mr Update. This bag of algorithms he tips into our computers is meant to act like a 2000mg capsule of probiotics. While your computer sleeps, millions of Mr Update’s microbes, bugs, and bacteria rush through your computer’s guts, so  it wakes up transformed.

Quite often this works. But quite often it doesn’t. The drugs that brighten up other people’s computers are the same ones that make your own sick. Mine wakes up dragging its feet, with its personality changed, and a surly attitude to orders. Lazily it refers me to useless people like "System Administrator".  (This cove should be cuffed and placed under mouse arrest).

In some ways I’m sorry for Mr Update. Being a software programmer involves the same risks as sex — make one mistake and you live with it the rest of your life. (Their flawed, unwanted offspring are christened with names like Version 1.1.)

On days Mr Update wreaks havoc, I’m left Googling a question like: "Windows thinks it needs an hourly nap — how do I wake it up."

We jump into an online forum  filled with others plagued by the new computer napping.

The nitpicker will tell Wit’s End he’s idiotically ticked the box which said: "Accept automatic updates." 

Well of course I ticked the bloody box!  You won’t get service if you don’t. Life as we know it can’t continue unless all we mugs tick the box. Just as Atlas was condemned to hold up the sky, we box tickers now shoulder the marketing universe.

But the liberties taken with box tickers become too blatant. I bought my Samsung phone outright from Spark because I  didn’t want to be besieged by marketing add-ons. But still my angry fingers constantly delete "helpful" new commercial app icons installed overnight. Who is to blame? Samsung? Spark? Google? Or is there another wretched box I ticked without reading terms and conditions the length of the Marriage Act.

Or maybe I made a "pocket change". Perhaps my hankie brushed my mobile? A pocket change has already seen my GPS deliver me and the Duchess to a cowshed in Lombardy instead of a historic Palladian villa.  (It was a near miss. Only about 80km).

Last month this mobile signed me up to special services for the blind. In  2016 the American Council of the Blind got Netflix to supply something called "audio description". The short-sighted can now stream Netflix shows and have the pictures described. My Samsung decided I was the ticket for this, and began streaming House of Cards with an audio guide dog.

"It is the Oval office," the guide dog announced.

"Frank Underwood fiddles with his cuff, and smiles sardonically. Claire enters, naked except for her agenda."

This is terrific for the blind. But it is climb-up-the-wall maddening when you can’t find a way to turn it off. Netflix, bless them, offers a Call Centre staffed by real people. The first three reps didn’t seem to know Netflix for the Blind existed, but finally a Texan accent said: "Heck, this is easy. I’m emailing you the fix-it instructions as we speak."

He did. The directions were ludicrous, but the lunacy worked. It also provided a window into the mind of the software programmer.  To turn off TV for the blind I needed to click the button for "English". Huh? So will Netflix look clearer in French?

- John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.