Technic Cleansing

It has not been a good week technologically speaking. Some time ago my Cambridge Audio amp gave up the ghost and decided to cut out at irregular but frequent intervals. My Play Station has been nothing but trouble since I bought the damn thing and I have regretted wasting money on such a useless piece of junk from almost the day it arrived in my house. The up-scaling DVD player I purchased has been showing signs of overheating and consequent picture and sound loss. The large format Digital TV has also found to be wanting when it sometimes decides to show random colours and vertical stripy lines instead of the crisp clear picture it was purchased to provide.

A few days ago and my current pride and joy, Rhonda The Honda, was knocked over buy a group of people watching my friend The Beast trying to extinguish flames coming out the back of his van. That is another story for a future entry. I went to see TB to get my bike back from his house last evening and pushed the ignition button on RTH and waited as precisely nothing happened. It turns out that after righting the bike some tyre kickers and lever pullers had switched on the heated grip switch and my battery had run dry. The bike is new to me at least and trying to figure out how to find the battery and how to get it out of the housing was a major feat in itself. However it was accomplished after much teeth grinding and hair pulling. I took it home to charge up.

Feeling less than pleased that RTH was sat miles away and I was unable to take her out for a spin, I decided to relax by watching the last two episodes of Doctor Who that Roger Moor had kindly placed onto a DV disk for me. About 30 minutes into a gripping episode the up scaling DVD decided it had overheated and would now only show a few frames of picture and the occasional sound bite when it felt like it. Feeling non-plussed about this I turned on the play station and decided to watch the rest of the disk from that. It has to be said the picture was superb but there was no sound. I swapped cables, reset the Sony, consulted the manuals and rang friends for help but all to no avail. The Play Station had decided that it was only fit for deaf people and as I still have hearing left it was going to show me exactly who was boss. Several hours later and I had just about enough of this piece of shit laughing at me. As I said earlier I have regretted buying this item and I was determined if it was not going to work for me then it would not work for any one.

It has to be said that the Play Station does not bounce well nor is it waterproof. I expect the frogs in my pond are extremely happy with their new pond ornament. It was in its own little way my episode of “Gourmet Night” from “Fawlty Towers” in which Basil Fawlty decides to give his car a “Damn good thrashing” I have consequently banned all Sony products from my house and I have resolved never to purchase one of their products ever again. It’s a one-man crusade and it won’t make any difference to the Japanese giant but it makes me feel good and I know I wont have to suffer one of their over bloated and so complicated pieces of hardware ever again.

There are advantages of getting rid of stuff that does not work, it is extremely good for the soul and it is one less item I have to worry about when I go away. I wont have to store it or transport it anywhere. Unless the up-scaling DVD and the TV decide to buck their ideas up a similar fate awaits them. It is called Technic Cleansing.