There's this online game called Chicktionary that I really
enjoy playing. In fact, I’ve enjoyed
playing it for years. Basically, it involves a row of cartoon
chickens that lay eggs that have a different letter on each one. The object of the game is to make as many
words as you can from the letters. In each round, the game tells you how many
words you should be able to make. If you make all of them, you get 10,000 bonus
points and advance to the next round.
When I first started playing Chicktionary, there was this
guy, Studly, who held the record for the highest score – a whopping 101 million
points. For some inexplicable reason, I
became obsessed with beating him.
It took me four months of intense Chicktionary playing to
amass a score higher than Studly’s. But
I didn’t publicly post my score until was I certain I’d beaten him by a wide
margin…then I cackled fiendishly as I posted my 147 million points and saw my
name replace Studly’s as the new high-scorer. I’d defeated the king! It didn’t matter that I had a persistent
stiff neck from endless hours of looking down at my laptop, or that I’d
developed a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome from trying to move my hands
fast enough to make the required number or words in the allotted time-limit for
each round. What mattered was I’d beaten Studly. And that made all of the
torture worthwhile.
As it turned out, my reign as the high scorer was
short-lived. To my shock and dismay, within only two weeks, Studly was back on
top with a score of over 200 million. I
couldn’t believe it. What had taken me over four months to accomplish had taken
him only mere days to beat. I figured he mustn't have eaten, slept, or gone to
the bathroom in two weeks.
That did it. I was so discouraged, I didn't care if I ever
saw another chicken again (other than on a plate next to some mashed potatoes).
So I gave up playing Chicktionary for many months.
But recently, I suddenly had the desire to play the game
again – purely for my own enjoyment, not to beat anyone. So I grabbed my laptop and played the game
for about two hours. When it came time
to shut off the computer, however, everything froze. I spent about 10 unsuccessful minutes trying to unfreeze it
before I finally gave up, pressed the "power" button and went to bed.
When I turned on the computer again the next day, a message
flashed on the screen that made my heart momentarily stop beating…"Dumping
Files."
I had no idea what that meant, but I had the sneaking
suspicion that when it came to computers, anything that started with the word
"dumping" probably wasn't a good thing.
Sure enough, within a few seconds I couldn't even get into
the computer. Panicking, I called the
technical-support line for help.
"That's not good," the woman told me when I
explained what was wrong (as if she were telling me something I didn’t already
know). "Bring it into the store and let one of the technicians check it
out."
So the first thing the next day, I headed to the electronics
store where I’d bought the computer. Normally I wouldn't have ventured out, as
I have become a total recluse during the pandemic, but I deemed this to be an
emergency.
"You have two options," the technician told me
after he turned on the computer, pressed a few keys and shook his head so much
he resembled a bobblehead doll. "We can restore it for you and save what's
in your hard drive…for only $299."
I sucked in my breath. “Only” $299 was about $275 more than
I could afford. “What's the second option?" I nearly was afraid to ask.
"You can use the system-recovery disk that came with the
computer and restore everything yourself."
I decided to take my chances and try the do-it-yourself
approach.
The second I got home, I shoved the recovery disk into the
computer. Things seemed to be going along well until the program suddenly
paused to ask me how many partitions I wanted.
The only partitions I knew anything about were walls in houses. After some deliberation, I figured it might
be nice to have everything in just one area of the computer…so I chose the
single partition.
Obviously I made the wrong choice. The computer started flashing a message that said I'd run out of
space. Groaning, I called technical
support again and begged for help.
This time, I was assisted by a technician in India who spoke
so fast and had such a heavy accent, all I heard at my end was something like,
"Bwah ood nobby dweet, rajama…OK?" throughout most of the
conversation.
I kept saying "OK" in response to everything he
said, but for all I knew I was responding to, "And you said you dropped
the computer from a third-story window and that's why it doesn't work?"
Finally, the poor man grew tired of my constant,
"Excuse me? Can you repeat that?" and said he would mail me some
newer disks and to call him back when I received them so he could walk me
through the installation process, step by step.
"And then will all of my programs, photos and
information in my computer be fine?" I asked.
The technician laughed and said, from what I could
understand, that I pretty much should have kissed my files goodbye when I saw
the word “dumping” on the screen. He said that sometimes one file just goes bad
and wipes out and corrupts everything else in the computer.
The chickens laying eggs immediately came to mind as the
perpetrators, and I found myself wishing all of them would be turned into
fricassee.
An evil little part of me also secretly was hoping that
Chicktionary had caused similar problems with Studly’s computer.
Not that I’m vindictive or anything…
# # #
Sally Breslin is an award-winning humor columnist and
the author of “There’s a Tick in my Underwear!” “Heed the Predictor” and “The
Common-Sense Approach to Dream Interpretation." Contact her at:
sillysally@att.net
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