More Gadgets for the Computer

Joanna Bourne, Historical Romance

I have a more complicated relationship with my computer than I do with most of the humans I know.

It’s a MacBook Pro and I am, on the whole, fond of it and proud of it. One major problem, however, is that the DVD player/reader doesn’t work. It will accept DVDs into its mouth, but it will not play them. Having decided not to play them, it will not spit them out.

It’s kinda like a two-year-old about this.

So I did some research on what kinda outboard DVD reader to get. (An outboard or external DVD player is one that sits next to your computer and plugs in.) Everybody said ‘Get a Samsung 218′ and so, by golly, I did.

I hooked this outboard up with the little wire provided using the Universal Directions that showed plugging the two ends into the slots they fitted.
 (DUH)
Took like eight drawings to show this. I put the CD they provided inside the little drawer. It went whirr whirr for a minute.

So I’m sitting there thinking, “What now?’

I find the User’s Manual on line and download it as a pdf.
You’re thinking, “Why didn’t she read the User’s Manual first” and all I can say is that I never look at the directions first and thus have many interesting encounters with Things I Buy.

So I open the Manual and it spends ten pages telling me not to drop the thing in water and not to put heavy stuff on it and some stuff called RoH and WEEE which may have to do with recycling. I skipped that.

It explains very carefully how not to drop it in water, actually.

Then it gets to the stuff I need to know and it starts using words like firmware – which has a nice sound to it, though god knows what it What is Buffer Underrun Prevention Technology?” and answers itself in a way that leaves me no wiser.

means. It asks, being philosophical or something — “
And we continue.

How to Confirm Installation of the Device Driver.
Go to Macintosh More Info and click ‘Device Manager’
which my machine doesn’t have.
Just no Device Manager anywhere.

How to confirm USB 2.0 and install the USB driver
Well we just look at the Universal Serial Bus Controller, don’t we?
which my machine doesn’t have
or doesn’t call that
or just doesn’t want to talk about

I have reached Overload Confuzzlement Status at this point
and I am only halfway through the User’s Manual.
And if I want to do anything or ask anything
the manual directs me to a website that doesn’t exist.

I go to YouTube and watch some geek spend half his time explaining how to hook the wire up by putting the ends in the slots that fits
(Is this something people have trouble with? Really?)
and then lapse into incomprehensibility for a while
and then say, “… and that’s how you do it.”

So I sit there and whimper
and the dog comes over and puts her head in my lap.

I say, “The hell with this” and go get an actual DVD
and take OUT the CD that came with the outboard player
and put IN the movie DVD
which is Nicolas Le Foch Man With the Lead Stomach
and that plays just fine.

RITA-winning author Joanna Bourne writes historical fiction set in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and Regency England. It was a time of love and sacrifice, clashing ideals, and really cool clothing.