in which our hero reprints Little Byte Lies...

This one is still very true:

The signs the honeymoon is over are unmistakable. I thought I could keep anyone from finding out, but I was wrong. At first the façade was easy to maintain, but lately I’ve noticed tiny cracks appearing. What once caused rolled eyes now leads to muttering.  Minor annoyances I used to barely notice escalate into open irritation.  An undercurrent of resentment and hostility darkens the entire relationship.  Trust has been shattered. Communication is strained and short, even in public, so the dirty little secret can’t be hidden any longer. The shame is nearly unbearable - I can’t maintain the charade another minute. I’ve got to stop lying to myself and everyone else, so I might as well confess and let the chips fall where they may…

The only way is to just come right out and say it, so here goes: I HATE COMPUTERS!  There. I’ve said it, and I’m not sorry. 

I’m not alone, either. If you were totally honest, you’d admit you hate them too.  I know it’s hard to face, because we develop software every day. Hating what puts food on your table, makes your car payments and pays your children’s college tuition creates what psychologists call ‘cognitive dissonance’, a condition of discomfort between what one knows to be true and what one wants to be true. Psychologists can call it anything they want, I call it stress.

I believed them when they said technology would make my life easier. Ha! Will someone please tell me what is so easy about trying to remember thirty-one different log-on Ids and passwords?

You know why I hate computers? I’ll tell you why I hate computers:

• I hate all the typos from my big fat fingers hitting more than one itty-bitty teeny-tiny key at a time.

• I can’t stand that in one application you ‘tab’ from one field to another, but have to use ‘enter’ in the next one.

• ‘Copy’ won’t, ‘Paste’ don’t, and the only time ‘Delete’ works is when I don’t want it to.

• I hate that you have to type. I can’t type.

• And logic – my children certainly aren’t logical, my car isn’t very logical, business decisions often appear rather illogical, in fact, nothing in my life makes much sense at all – so why do computers have to be logical?

• I hate the smug little dialog boxes that pop up to remind me of every little mistake I make. 

• Or start up routines that take ten minutes to run.

• That cursed hourglass, turning over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over until I just want to scream.

• And the acronyms! PC, MS DOS, LAN, WAN, TCPIP, GIG, MEG, ad nausea.
• Why is it the price drops 25% and the performance doubles the day after you break down and buy your home PC? As if that’s not bad enough, you find out from your brother-in-law, who waited.

• I hate required fields buried at the bottom of forms.
• The way a computer just seems like an automated, hyper-fast version of Murphy’s Law.

• And I hate needing the strength of Samson, patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon and the power of Moses just to get a new software package out of the stupid box.

All is not lost. I want to like computers. Honest, I do. After all, Ahab liked whales before Moby Dick. Batman and the Joker played cards together in college. Once upon a time I actually liked computers. I can remember watching them do their magic and saying ‘Wow – I sure wish I had one of those.” (Of course, I’ve said that about puppies and kittens too, but they grow into dogs and cats.) 

But that was before I spent every hour of every working day fighting for my life against them. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve had to reboot, I could afford to hire a computer consultant to have all this cognitive dissonance for me.