It Just Won't Die

So, I recently attended a class reunion and being the tech guy I am, one of the best stories of the weekend came from your average stay at home mom computer user.

First of all I could immediately tell from her tone and passion that she is one of those people that has very little time between pumping her breasts and changing diapers to be messing with trying to "fix the damn computer".

I would bet that Email and maybe an occasional Amazon purchase are the only thing keeping her from just cutting the cord entirely.

Typically once I tell people I work as a software support engineer I get one of four reactions.

1. Huh?
2. Wow, that's cool I work as a _______________ (fill in the blank with random techie job)
3. Hey can I get your email address in case I have some questions?
4. Ohh really, I hate those damn things, you know what happened the other day...

Needless to say it was #4 that prompted the following paraphrased story.


"So Cordell I have this Gateway computer that has been giving me problems recently and I was so mad at the thing I threw it down the stairs hoping to get a new one."

At this point I was wondering how she was going to explain that to the tech on the phone but I didn't want to interrupt.

"and do you know what happened, the damn thing survived. I was so mad I decided to pour Lemonade all over it."

I'm fairly certain I was outwardly laughing at this point at the sure uniqueness of dumping Lemonade all over your computer but it continued.

"so I let it sit on there for two days before finally picking it up and dumping it out and I heard this little POP sound. Do you think it's finally dead?"

I was way too amused to offer any honest answer at this point and just smiled and crossed my fingers hoping I hadn't given her my email address yet. :)


It was this conversation which prompted me to think about having computer hardware reliability ratings but not your typical software/hardware ratings but something like frustrated as hell accident ratings in different categories.

• Drop or Throw test
• Spill or Drown test
• Ax or Hammer test
• etc
  

The closest thing I could find were true reliability ratings where IBM and Apple top the list but I am fairly certain they didn't undergo the "single mom test"