My World is Falling Apart -- Literally

How do I begin to explain? Everything I touch lately seems to be falling apart.

1. My cell phone. I hadn't realized how long it has been since I charged it, and seeing as it's been in my bag all weekend (I've been working, so there was very little need for me to ever pull it out), I didn't even hear the discreet "Help me! I'm dying!" tones it emitted. When I finally did pull it out of my bag, I foolishly attempted to actually use it -- turned it on and dialed quickly, hoping to get a word or two in before the battery zonked out again. The other phone rang once and it died again. No problem, I thought. I'll just charge it when I get home. Unfortunately, for some bizarre reason, my attempts to shove the charger into the phone properly were not met with success. No little "Battery Charging" symbol showed up. Nothing. I could have stuck a Q-tip in there for the same result. So, for now, my cell phone is dead and incapable of revivification.

2. My Jukie (I like this word -- just the way it sounds). Just bought it. Eventually managed to get Dell to tell me how to fix it, but for a while I was concerned. I did what the instructions told me to: I charged the device for over six hours, installed some software on my home machine, and started transferring music. It worked for a bit when I first opened the box, so I was happy. Then I took it to work -- because my office machine actually has a better music collection than my home computer at the moment. I happily started putting a slew of music from my computer on to my jukie (I still love this word). After I left for the day, taking my jukie with me, I got home to find that I couldn't turn the jukie on. The little battery indicator bar was there, but I could not get to a main menu. This irritated me greatly.

Eventually I got a customer service rep to talk to me about my problem. He suggested I use the "reset" button on my machine. Honestly, I had thought of that before, but I didn't want to have to reload all the music if I could avoid it. So I made sure I wouldn't lose the data if I hit reset, and he assured me so. So I did it, and it works now! Funny thing is, he said I shouldn't use that button often. And he also said that the jukie, like operating systems, sometimes requires a reboot after installing new stuff. Wait, says I, if I have to reset every time I load new music on, but then shouldn't reset too often, doesn't that mean I can't put new music on here very frequently? Now that I think about it, I don't think I received an acceptable reply to this question: I was just happy that the thing was now playing my music.

Oh, random aside: The hold message I had while waiting for my support guy (in India) said:

We are currently experiencing longer than usual hold times due to a recent outbreak of an internet worm. If your computer crashes upon startup, or if [blah blah blah], you may be infected with this worm. . . . Point your browser to [Norton or McAfee web sites] to fix this problem.

My question is this: If your computer is "crash[ing] upon startup," how the hell are you supposed to point your browser to anything, let alone anti-virus sites?

3. As mentioned above, my home computer isn't doing so hot. I installed a second hard drive where I'm storing data (as opposd to programs), including my music collection, and (ahem) pictures. Well, the hard drive is slightly farged. I've identified that there are some specific files in there that suffer from a "cyclic redundancy error", making them unreadable and, thus, useless. Problem is, the error also apparently renders them undeleteable, and they're stuck on my machine. Moreover, something about this error, it seems, prevents my Explorer from being able to "see" everything on the drive. So while my RealPlayer gives me a complete list of the music it can get to, my Windows Explorer won't show me music files past "D" on my subfolers.

4. My ceiling. Okay, so I didn't literally touch it, and it's really not even my fault. But earlier this summer, I noticed some slight water stains on the ceiling in my living room. Eventually these water stains turned into a giant water bubble -- sort of like an off-white version of those black domes that house security cameras in department stores. One night it finally hit breakdown, and dripped all night long onto my shelf. I know because a pilsner glass I have was filled with water, and then some. I complained to the condo about it, and they're getting my upstairs neighbor to pay for the fix-it job.

5. The closet door in my bathroom. Okay, again, I didn't touch it, and I don't know how this happened, but I was awakened in the middle of the night last night by a tremendous THUD. It had been a long day at work (literally 10 hours in the office -- on Columbus Day!) so I awoke groggily, thought What was that?, and looked up to verify that my front door was still closed. As long as no one had broken in and started doing bad stuff to my apartment (or me), I decided whatever that was could wait until morning. I went back to sleep.

This morning I found my closet door halfway to the floor in my bathroom, its fall broken only by the ironing board which used to sit right in front of it. (The ironing board, by the way, is now rendered dangerous to useless, seeing as a door collapsing upon it caused its legs to become uneven.) I spent a good part of the morning just trying to get everything out of the way so I could shower and other prepare for the day. I just didn't have the time or energy to fix the actual door.

So that's my laundry list so far of things broken. I do sincerely hope my work machine doesn't pull a kaput on me. I have got a lot of work to do this week.