Technology as Metaphor

“This server is currently experiencing a problem. An engineer has been notified and will investigate.”

I haven’t posted since Sunday and was starting to feel seriously negligent, but my desperate midnight attempt to blog was met by “server problems.”

It’s a Sign.

An omen. A metaphor for the rest of my life at the moment.

The entire evening was full of thwarted technological adventures.

Job 1: Transcribe the audio recording of the interview I did this afternoon with Emil de Cou about the National Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming concerts at Wolf Trap.
Obstacle 1: The mini-disc battery quit on me, and I realized I had left the AC adapter at the office.

Job 2: Choose excerpts from last summer’s operas to submit as work samples for a grant funding proposal that’s due in a few days.
Obstacle 2: The DVD recorder won’t work without the remote, and said remote has gone missing.

Job 3: Burn CDs onto laptop in order to pull 30-second excerpts for web page audio clips.
Obstacle 3: This probably would’ve worked if I hadn’t insisted on doing it at the same time I was trying to download photos and press kits for booking sheets for next season’s chamber music series.

Job 4: Blog.
Obstacle 4: “An engineer has been notified and will investigate.”

All while nagging my son to read his “Taming of the Shrew” assignment for tomorrow, attempting to make a small contribution to my husband’s repertoire dilemma for his upcoming English choral concert, and reassuring my daughter that it’s OK if she doesn’t get everything done that she hoped to during spring break. (The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.)

Since you’re reading this, that means the server is back up and running. Gotta love those folks at Blogger – the status page says “The offending server is being replaced and then shot.”

Tomorrow’s another day. Maybe I’ll post something of substance. Or I will put every piece of godforsaken technological crap that I own in a pile and pour gasoline on it.