Stupid Tuesday. . .The Electronic Edition. . .

I made a vow some weeks ago to save all of my ranting and raving for Tuesday instead of on Monday. Well, guess what? It's fucking Tuesday. With a vengeance.

It all started this morning. I was sitting on the toilet at 4:30 a.m. pondering the great dilemmas of the world when a giant cockroach sped across the bathmat causing me to leave out in mid-stream, with my bits flapping about wildly as I hatched my escape. For reasons unknown, cockroaches gravitate towards me as do comets towards the sun, and this roach chased me right out of the bathroom.

Yes, I'm terrified of cockroaches. For some people, it's snakes. Others, heights. On ocassion, the number 13. For me, it's roaches. I'd rather be falling through the sky inside a bag full of snakes on Friday the 13th than be anywhere, at any time, near a roach.

So, I did what any big puss would do, I found a can of Raid, hunted that scurrying, diabolical creature down and gave him a face full of hurt. This apparently had no real effect initially, other than to piss the thing off, sending it into hyperspace as he zoomed around the bathroom, then into my bedroom. Not the greatest of situations, but at least I could finish my business as the nerve gas put a slow end to him under my bed. I'd reluctantly deal with the corpse later.

I returned to my throne only to see the cockroach come wheeling around the corner, zig-zagging his way across the floor again. Again, at me. Again, cornered, naked and freaking the hell out. He finally crashed into the wall, flipped over on his back skittering about in the throes of chemical-induced death. Die you diesased vermin die!! DIE!!!!

Ugh. Fucking cockroaches.

Then I get to work only to realize that the power supply to my laptop (and lifeline) has kicked the proverbial bucket and no longer does what it is designed to do, which is keep me happy.

Now in my great stroke of good fortune, I have, trapped inside of my notebook, countless useful items and modicums of knowledge that I need on a daily basis, like clandestinely photographed pictures of Beatrice's butt and an entire collection of I Can Has Cheezeburger kitty cat pictures. Shit.

And to top it all off, in an effort to salvage some actual work-related data during the waning nano-seconds of the battery life, I tried printing a multi-page document on my Ricoh Aficio SP C210sf Multi-Function Document Center, which is technical parlance for big ol' piece of shit. This piece of crap is nothing more than a noisy irritant that takes forever to warm up after a print cycle and makes so much noise while printing, that I once saw the machine described on an eletronics forum as "a box full of wild animals who are trying to get out".

The box of wild animals made it to about page 4 before a series of bleeps and blips occured, that are not like the other random beeping and blipping which occurs during the operation of this device. I checked the error message and it cryptically informed me to install the OPC belt.

Well, what in hades it that? And how the hell could the one I installed at receipt of the machine have disappeared?

After my research, I find out that new OPC belts on the free and open market are far from free. More like $500 worth of free. Hell, I could buy a whole new printer for that amount of money. And I could certainly find one that doesn't sound like a bucketfull of drunk monkeys when I simply want to print a picture of a Cheezeburger kitty.

Or Beatrice's butt.

Stupid Tuesdays.