October 16th, 2006
So you drive a car to work everyday. You get up, have breakfast, head to the garage and get in. Start the car, put it in gear and drive off. Day two. Same deal. Then comes Day X. Car won's start. It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while, the car will fail. In fact, all mechanical devices fail sometimes. Because that's what they are, constructs whose success rate is 'good enough' for what we need them to do.
Ever noticed how the human body is equally prone to error? Less probable to fail perhaps, in a period of time, but just as likely to fail when the time comes. And I'm not talking about sickness, inborn defects or hereditary disposition. I mean plain everyday things. Like you're in class and the teacher asks you a question and you open your mouth to speak, but... no voice comes out. So you clear your throat (the proverbial 'reboot') and it's back. It's such a weird thing, it probably doesn't happen more than a couple of times a year (so just imagine how reliable your voice is!), but you never see it coming and it does happen. And it's not triggered by any kind of special situation, sometimes it happens in high-stress cases, sometimes in trivial settings. It's almost as if you want to test your voice before you're about to address a person in a crucial moment, just to be sure.
The voice thing happens yeah, usually in critical moments too :D
I also hate that other one when you reach for your coffee cup at work, which is something I probably do ~100 times a week but every once in a while it fails. Whichever little navigation gadget in the brain takes care of said action seems to freeze and instead of reaching your fingers *around* the cup in order to grab it, you bump them *at* the cup, causing it to tip over.
Great metaphor btw, kudos.
Oh yes the beverage reach, that one is much worse. I've spilled lots of drinks that way :wallbang:
Yesterday I had major body malfunctions all over. Not just illness (although that probably caused it), but a banged head and just about everything I picked up got accidentally dropped.
Trust you to think of people as needing a reboot though :P
You don't need a reboot, you need intensive maintenance :redface: