Tech Angst

Human condition triggered when a piece of electronic equipment, typically a computer, suddenly decides- or is persuaded to decide by some unwanted outside agency (see BOFH for example)- that it is no longer going to work and will either give no information or hopelessly incomprehensible information as to why not. Tech Angst can occasionally, in WJR's case, be alleviated by reading the instructions properly, but none the less, it can't be denied, computers are arrogant little Miserable OFBs.

However, it should be noted that, occasionally, humans do rather well at getting their own back on the evil boxes of doom:

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3193366.stm Hm, re: the 'sod it' button, I recall having a train set as a child, whose power transformer/controller/thingy was wont to start emitting a high pitched, grating buzz at random intervals. The most effective way of silencing it, which I can't recall ever prevented it from working, was to keep a small hammer nearby, and fetch the thing a tremendous whack broadside on. This, for some reason, shut it up. Please don't tell me how close I came to electrocuting myself/causing a fire/sending a man-made electrical virus back along the National Grid to Sizewell B and triggering a nuclear holocaust. -- WJR