Rise Of The Geek Machines?

Over on Orkut Media Jen La Sala (whose articles never cease to amuse me) publishes another amusing post regarding the dreaded office machines of America.

Other people must have this problem. It starts when one thing breaks, then something else, then something freezes, and when you think there is nothing left that can go wrong, something starts to smoke. That's when you know it's happened. The machines have turned against you. [...]

In any office, there is that one contraption that befuddles the most eager of IT personnel that can reduce the most even-tempered employee into a raging stapler wielding head case. In my office, it is the combination printer copier.

Having worked on these machines as an IT technician, I can testify how annoying they were to work on. It usually did not matter if these machines were old or new, laser print or an office machine, USB connection verses wireless, they always caused jams, toner issues and worst of all, missing documents.

The "printer ate my project" was a common excuse at my former job, and to make things worse I could not operate on the machine because of a "minor" contract with the manufacturer!

Ok, enough ranting about my life experiences, here is more of Jen via Rant:

All of this makes me glad I'm not an astronaut. Since technical things seem to go wrong all around me I could be right at home at NASA. [...]

Insulation issues have been a thorn in the side of NASA's space program since the mid-air disintegration of Columbia in 2003, caused by a piece of insulation breaking off from the shuttle mid-decent.

She later talks about the Discovery space shuttle mission which NASA bet it would succeed despite the minor issue with the insulation (and it looks like NASA won that bet).

Hopefully technology failures won't keep Jen from reaching the stars. After all, with Google expanding around the world, I wouldn't be surprised to find her writing from the Moon.