I hate electrical equipment...

and it seems to feel similarly towards me.

I bought my laptop - this laptop right here - three years ago. February of '05. Immediately after purchasing it, it did this thing were, if you moved it too quickly, it shut down. I thought, for a while, that laptops did that. A few months later, SisterJ purchased her laptop and I noticed "wow, you can move it without treating it like it is plutonium and it still works!" So I asked my HP people what was wrong with the puter and they said "Send it to us, it sounds broken." I did, and it was. The motherboard was 'compromised' and had to be replaced. That sucked, since it was a new laptop and then I was without it for a few weeks - about a month, I think.

About 6 months later, one of my 3 USB ports (the quickest one) stopped working. Just wouldn't even show up on my manage devices list. It kinda sucked, but I dealt with it. A few weeks later, another one stopped working. (To figure this out I had to buy a new cord for my printer, as I had assumed it was the cord that was broken. It wasn't.) Less than 3 months later, the final remaining USB port refused to show up. Nice. Went to the HP people again, and they were all "You must have done something, I wonder why that would happen if you didn't uninstall them" (As if I were purposely removing the posibility of my computer being able to communicate with other devices. "Send it to us," they said, acting as if I needed to be reported to Social Services for laptop abuse. I packed it up and sent it off AGAIN and it as gone for a month and a half. When it came back, they grudgingly admitted that the computer had done it on its own, acting out with the sort of antisocial behavior you expect from 3 year olds.

This year, as we have discussed, I had to send the pretty computer away because the fan was overheating and then full on stopped working. Again: not my fault; Again, at least 3 weeks with no laptop.

The same time I bought my laptop, I bought a printer with it - an Epson. It was an color, copier, printer, and it was free with rebate. I love free. I love rebates. I thought I was veeery lucky. Sometime between the first time I had to send the computer back and the second time I had to send it back, the printer stopped working. Totally. The ink cartridge had somehow leaked into the inside of the machine, and was producing large black splotches on ... everything. The printer refused to print anything, and then got to the point where it wouldn't even turn on anymore. Nice. So I called up Epson, and they were all "really? How'd that happen? Oh wait, that's a known issue with this model. Send it back to us and we'll send you a new one. A better one! You're a lucky lucky girl!"

Yes, I totally felt lucky, as I'm sure you can imagine.

That printer lasted about 2 years, until, last fall, right when my family troubles were exploding, it decided to start eating the paper. It would start to load a page to print out on, and instead of going through, it would crumple it up and then flash red lights at me. "error! error! Error!" it would yell. As if I couldn't tell from the whole gobbling up the paper thing. The warranty had, of course, expired by this point, and this would've been my 3rd try with the Epsons anyway, plus I had been thinking about getting an all in one that you can fax with (because of my timesheets for the PCA program that have to be in every two weeks and sending Mum to Staples every other Monday seemed pretty low on the list of priorities when you're dealing with famiy emergencies).

So to make things easier on myself (and everybody else), I went ahead and bought a brand new printer/copier/scanner/fax. It's a Canon, and I have loved it for all of the 5 months that I have been using it. It printed out SisterJ's save the dates, her wedding invitations, the games we played at the shower. I've completed about 25 of SisterCh's scrapbook pages on the thing, in the past week. It and I have copied a gazillion magazine pages, crochet directions, and recipes.

And then, there came today. When I tried to copy Youngest Nephew's Report Card (he did awesome, watch out 3rd Grade!), the printer started making this scary noise, lights started flashing, paper stopped rolling in. The piece of paper ripped somewhere inside the machine. And there, it got lost. A little piece of paper is sitting in there, making everything else NOT WORK. So I called Canon, and yippee, you guessed it "Please sent it to us, we'll send you a new one to replace it. There's no way you can fix it yourself."

UGH. Just Ugh. I mean, seriously, why do electronic things hate me so much? I am a good owner. I don't misuse them or eat food and drop it into them. I use that spray duster thing regularly, and I've only dropped my poor laptop once, and then, it was because I was dropping as well. (We haven't talked about that: it was the week leading up to the wedding, the computer and I took a tumble ... a serious tumble. My back was WAAY messed up and I was really glad you couldn't see it under my dress. And the puter was ok except for some dead pixels in the lower right corner. Which bothered me a lot at first, but now I realize all it means is that I have to look somewhere else to see what time it is. I think I can deal.) I am not cruel to things with plugs, but they must have heard horror stories, because there is some sort of computer/printer conspiracy when it comes to me.

So, if you have anything that needs copying, you - and I - will have to wait 7-10 days. Sorry about that.