Great Geek Conspiracy

When was the last time your computer ran smoothly for a month? No, strike that, when was the last time your computer ran smoothly for a week? In fact, have you ever gone to work and not had some networking issue or software compatibility issue?

Of course you haven't. Because that's just as likely as you actually being the 1,000,000th visitor and actually winning that iPad.

That's because of the Great Geek Conspiracy.

Who doesn't hate Bill Gates? Anyone? Microsoft? Anyone out there who doesn't soundly curse their name on a regular basis? But really, they're just the tip of the iceburg. The real conspiracy comes in the little things.

The time card program that only works with a specific iteration of Internet Explorer.
Adobe Flash updating every 25 minutes.
Your printer than refuses to work with your new computer.
The new television that has more ports than your first computer, and not a one of them matches a cable in your existing entertainment center.
The fact that your toaster has more processing power than the computer used to break the Enigma codes in WWII yet cannot make toast that isn't burned on one side.

That's right, it's not just you. All these things are signs of the geek conspiracy.

Paul Allen, Steve Wozniak, and those bastards at Adobe? They are totally out to get you.

Every time your computer randomly reboots, every time an update sticks more icons on your desktop, every time your browser inexplicably pops up a porn site when your mother-in-law sits down at your computer to check her e-mail?

That's all part of the plan.

All those curse words you spew out? That's one more sliver of your soul flitting straight to Redmond, WA.

Every time you click "I agree" without bothering to read the seventy screens of text in eight point font, that's a bit of your soul bartered away to help build Steve Job's skating rink in Hell.

Think about it. Do you think a mere mortal could sell you a iPhone for 500% what it's worth and have you standing in line in the rain for the next version, even though the last one wouldn't actually, you know, make a phone call that lasted more then half a minute before inexplicably hanging up?

Of course not. Your computer, your phone, your toaster are all part of a diabolical plot to create a level of unhappiness and anger normally seen only on the D.C. beltway during freak snowfall at 5PM at the start of a three day weekend.

I suppose now you want to know how to combat these evil and to escape the computer overlords?

Too bad. You can't.

Best you can do is make sacrifices to your local computer gods.

I suggest donuts.