My PC Is Out To Get Me!

I think my PC is out to get me.

Over the last while, I've been noticing little things. Like when I am trying to type and I know how to spell the word but it doesn't come out that way on the screen. There will be an extra letter or the letters will be reversed. Say I want to type the word "night". Well instead of it being "night", it will be something like "nighjt" or "nihgt".

Sometimes it will look like a foreign language. Say I am typing the word "year". It may come out as "ywse" or some other weird combo.

Other times it will insert a symbol just ;ike that. It may aLSO SET THE CAPS LOCK FOR ME without my permission. It has even been known to hit enter
rather than backspace. Occasionally it will use a ! rather than an @ or a period rather than a comma.

It is rather odd isn't it? But that is not the only thing.

The mouse is also in on the act and I swear it is out to embarrass and humiliate me. I play a number of games - mostly match 3 and puzzle games. Depending on the style, colours and layout of the game field, there are some games that I can do very well at, despite my low vision. One game that I have been able to best all of my online pals at, is called "Bricks Breaking" I play it on my social network site of choice, but you can find it on several sites including Mindjolt.

The concept is simple. There are three colours of bricks. You destroy all the bricks by clicking in groups of the same colour. You need to use a magic wand if you want to destroy a single brick. You get five wands. Once those are gone you keep playing until you have one or more bricks left that you can't destroy within a group. It is actually harder than it sounds and takes both luck and strategy to actually make it through rounds without using any of the wands. The highest that I have ever scored is 257,346. I've gone over 200,000 three or four times now but usually am somewhere in the 100,000 to 150,000 range. Unless, of course my mouse decides to take control. There have been several occasions where I've been about to hit a group, when the mouse has jumped in before I was ready and ended up hitting a single brick - thus causing me to loose one of the valuable free wands. This is very annoying, especially if I was having a particularly good round up to that point. It also does it to me in a game called "Linyca". My highest score in that one is 318,645, but I've never been able to beat it as the mouse will sometimes hit individual colours in a row rather than multiples so I end up loosing points.

Not all of the games that I play are being disrupted by the mouse, but it is rather annoying when you are on a roll.

I know computers are supposed to be intelligent, but this thing is making a mockery of me and it has to stop!

I may be legally blind, and have a bit of trouble remembering how to spell some words, but even spell check can't figure out some of the things that have shown up on my screen!

YOu think I;m nuts don't you? (See it is doing it again!) You probably think this is all my own fault don't you?

Stop laughing! This is serious!

WEll I'm not making it up! The fact that I can't see very much or that I can't type worth a damn and am a lousy speller is completely beside the point. Computers are supposed to be smarter than us and make us look even better than we are.

Excuse me, but did I just hear someone say "The outcome is only as good as the information entered"??? Well...!!

My computer has had almost a year to get to know me and my abilities. I've more or less adjusted to Vista - and that wasn't easy - so why hasn't my PC adjusted to my needs and abilities?

It should know by now what I want and expect. It isn't like I misuse or abuse it. I've done everything I could to take care of it. I do a disk cleanup at least once a week. I defrag every month. I back things up. Everything I download is scanned before opening. If I'm going to be away from it for more than a couple of hours, I turn it off.

I've done everything for this computer and it repays me how? By mistyping words and clicking the mouse before I'm ready?

Harrumph! The nerve!!

Yes, there are also a lot of things it does right. It does alert me when I get emails, when there are updates available for various programs on my PC and keeps me updated on what is going on on my favourite web sites. It keeps me company and lets me listen to music, watch videos, play games, read what is going on in the world outside of my apartment and city. It lets me stay in touch with my friends through emails and networks.

Okay, okay. So it does more right than it does wrong. Maybe it is partially my fault that my keyboard and mouse aren't always doing what I want.

But I still think it is out to get me!

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

dn