The Sound & The Fury: My New Career as a Technical Consultant

Those who know me are aware that repetitive mechanical noises drive me crazy.

I'd rather get shock therapy than be subjected to truck "back-up noise." I've been known to freak out when people allow cell phone message alerts to go on, and on, and on. I think I would have to be institutionalized if I ever bought one of those cookie jars that oinks every time you reach for an Oreo.

I should tell you that one of the ports on the back of my computer is loose. Most of the time this doesn't cause a problem. However, at least once or twice a week, the system will decide that one of the ports has become too loose and starts BEEPing like crazy -- shrill, repetitive BEEPing. Thus begins the same laborious process...

I crawl under my dusty desk and jiggle the wires a bit. BEEP BEEP BEEP. Then, I restart the computer one or two times. BEEP BEEP BEEP. Finally I end my misery and call our technical support desk. BEEP BEEP BEEP. About 10 minutes (and plenty of BEEPs) later, a cheerful-but-overworked engineer crawls on his tummy, tinkers, reboots and solves the problem. Afterwards, he will look at me with say (with a special mix of both condescension and pity), "When this happens, just jiggle the wires around, you know, like this." Then, he smiles, dusts himself off and races to solve someone else's computer woes.

Early this morning I turned on my system.

BEEP BEEP BEEP.

So, I kicked it.

No more noise.

I'm thinking I'm already well on my way to a second career!