Me vs. Technology

When I first told my parents that I was going to go to Michigan to study film they expected that I'd counter it with something practical like computer engineering. To them my uncanny ability to connect and configure the family PC was equitable to a complete mastery and expertise of computer science, thus making any foray into the field a sure shot. Good thing I put all of my eggs into the filmmaking basket because if I had to make my living in front of a computer/working with computers I would most definitely be a basket case (writing doesn't count).

See, the thing is, I shouldn't have time to write this post right now. I have to have a cut of my film done in three days (now two), and aside from the absolutely necessary breaks to run a half marathon and take a stab at the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle my time should be totally devoted to making this first cut happen. Then why am I here typing instead of splicing shots together? Answer: because technology hates me.

It seems as though I am a persistent victim of Murphy's Law when it comes to technology. My hard drive crashed a week before my honors thesis was due back at U of M. My cell phone is a consistent source of headache and not living up to expectations. My computer decided to stop working this past summer costing me $300 dollars to repair (a lot to a grad student) and a week and a half without a computer. And today my external hard drive, which contained all of the files from my film decided that it didn't want to work anymore. Fitting.

If there's one thing I learned from my many technological misadventures, it's never to trust technology. Luckily, I backed up all of my files. But, I still had to go purchase another hard drive today and now have to wait 5 hours for the files to re-transcode so that I can start to edit. Thus freeing me up to complain...err....blog about it all here.

When I was still an impressionable young adult, I happened upon Henry David Thoreau's Walden and thought about how awesome it would be to shun society and technology and go chill and be all introspective in a cabin on a pond in the woods. I was a lot like the kid from Into the Wild, just not as bold. Thus, part of me now hates that I am completely tethered to technology. This is almost as bad as computer engineering.

Except, not really.

Ryan