"Are you Sarah Connor?"

The first time I knew Something Was Up was right before my move to Belfast.

It was a time of great excitement, a time of dreaming, a time of swotting up on the locale via Google maps, a time of…damn, what is WRONG with my computer? WHY is it sooooooo SLOOOOW…?

The rainbow of doom had been spinning lazily across my screen with alarming regularity for weeks. For a while, the gaily-coloured beach ball companionably bounced me out of one program. And then another.  And then it upped the ante and began cartwheeling across everything. Things got heavy between us when it started to crash.

And then it all went dark.

I don’t remember much after that but my hard-drive was gone, along with my photos, my questionable movie collection, my short stories, my unused blog posts and the countless invitations I’d ignored from the last chance back-up saloon.

I’d had my G4 Power-book for years. It was a tank of a Mac and I’d loved it. It was sturdy and hardwearing, and satisfyingly retro-heavy. It was deserving of a happy montage highlighting all the places we’d been together: high-fiving in parks, laughing on street corners. It was as loyal as a golden retriever pup and I wasn’t willing to let it go. So there I was, sitting in geek pre-op waiting on a couple of bearded, up-talking Macperts who were about to give it a full frontal lobotomy.

I shed a discreet tear but I went through with the unholy procedure anyway.

Like all things bought back from the dead, the replacement hard-drive was… well, it was not the same. Changed beyond all recognition underneath its familiar metal skin, my computer had been violated. The Krays had gone in and moved all the furniture around, it no longer responded to me. What a fool I had been!

I didn’t have my zombied laptop for long before I unceremoniously dropped it on the floor. Killing it for a second and final time, in a domestic collision between my big toe and the corner of a rolled-up-carpet, it landed with a sickening thunk. I knew, this time, it was over.

They call me Elecno

At the Regent Street Apple shop, I bought a spanking new MacBook Pro. It was glossy and sleek and light as a feather. I was taking it out of its box just as I was putting the rest of my life into one. I didn’t have time to try her out properly (yeah, her) but I was pretty sure We’d Get Along Fine. But my new Macbook was faulty out of the box - the very box I’d just packed up, along with the receipt, and carted off to a storage facility ahead of the move.

And that was the start of it, what happened next is how I got my nickname: Elecno. For I, and I don’t like to be immodest here, have a super power and by a super power, I mean, a really crap power: I can make electronic goods go wrong…by sheer dint of using them. 

The next indicator Something Was Up was when the company I was working for in ordered an office laptop for me. It was the size of a small dining room table, weighed more than a short man and was made by Dell. It was almost-new. And it almost-worked. It was eventually repaired enough times to warrant them giving up and replacing it with something new-new. Dell Replacement No 2 (same make, same ridiculously cumbersome build) was just that. I dragged it two hours down the road to Dublin before I realised the screen was dead. It was taken back to the company’s HQ to be sorted out by a mystified IT – the wires to the screen had magically become loose. When it happened a second time, they decided to replace it with another...

About this time, the Blackberry I’d had for nine months also died in my hand. The screen went blank and that was the end of that. Insured by Orange, the replacement phone swiftly arrived but, being reconditioned, within the space of a week, performed the same dying swan song as the first. I complained bitterly and was sent a brand new phone.

Blackberry No 3 lasted SEVERAL weeks before I dropped it in the washing up bowl.

Look, this, and that other (carpet-related) incident, are the only times in this tale of woe where I hold my hand up, and toe, and say, “Yes! THAT was MY BAD!” I’ll tell you what else was my mistake: thinking a pack of rice and a Tupperware dish were ever going to make it any better...

Orange immediately resorted to a reconditioned replacement, replacement phone. Not that I had time to think about that, I had Dell Replacement No 3 to deal with – this one had a keyboard with keys only loosely attached to the board. Still, at least it had a screen that worked even if I did keep dropping my H’s. (And T’s and D’s).

Blackberry Replacement Phone Number Four didn’t work out of the box. It was so obviously faulty, I followed the Orange delivery man down the office stairs demanding he replace it then and there. He didn’t. Blackberry No 5 arrived two days later via the same (now sheepish) courier. It lasted not much longer thanks to its inability to take calls or email on a daily basis. It was at this stage that a wise Orange employee kindly released me from my two year contract and suggested I find another phone – and also another phone company.

Dell Replacement No 4 didn’t like Word documents. Or PDFs. Leading to Dell Replacement No 5 which worked, if very slowly.

IT began avoiding my calls.

Epilogue

I moved on from Orange to O2 and the iPhone. A year in and things are going okay (touches wood). Mostly I keep my phone in a rubber cover and there’s a plastic screen protector too. I try not to touch it with my bare hands. I’m sporting Marigolds as a fashion statement. 

Dell Replacement No 5 was handed into my old company when I left the job – and not thrown out of a high, hotel window, as often fantasied.

Macbook Pro No2 has just had its hard-drive replaced. (Just two years in.) The upgraded hard-drive continues to spawn issues. As I type, I am just back from my fourth trip to the Genius bar in two months. I think I deserve an honorary blue geek tee for keeping them in business - but my requests remain unanswered.

Like I said, as superpowers go, I won’t be recruited to The Avengers anytime soon but maybe I have my role to play? Maybe people like me are the Sarah Connors of the future? Waiting in the wings as humanity’s secret weapon against our robotic overlords?  

Until then, I’m buying a bonnet and a buggy and joining the Amish. If you need me, I’ll be in a field somewhere. Ask for Elecno.