Dear technology, I am breaking up with you

Maybe not breaking up. But you are so on warning.

I am so tired of this shit. Seriously, who the hell can deal with consumer electronics? After shelling out hundreds of bucks, I bet most of this shit must be sitting brick-like in people's closets.

A while back I got Vonage, and with it a linksys wireless router with phone ports. It died, mysteriously, within a year. After hopeless conversations with Vonage and Linksys, I gave up and bought a new (and not cheap) one.

Zoom to now. The new one is now shitting itself copiously on a regular basis. I have to reboot it nearly daily (where "reboot" means "yanking power" since there's no switch) just to get it to pick up wireless again.

FUNNER than that (as if there's anything more fun!) it loses its entire configuration from time to time, leaving my network completely vulnerable until I notice and reconfigure it to keep the slathering zombie hordes out.

Then (just to make this a real and proper rant) there are my cellphones. Plural. My old phone was a Sony piece of crap that drops in the middle of calls with a horrid screeching noise and crashes because it has a fucking memory leak. So, when my contract came up I decided to get a NEW and SHINY phone from a new carrier.

First candidate : Motorola Rizr, a cool slider phone in a lovely color. I got it in the mail, and discovered it had zero signal in my house. Or in any other building. I took it to Tmobile - they said, "Well, it's a quirky phone. Get a different model."

What the fuck? Why do they sell it if it doesn't work? So, as instructed, I returned it to get a Samsung T-419 (or somesuch). Another cool slider phone, with a really shitty user interface. I was all ready to set it up, when I discovered it hadn't been properly activated. After a round with the company and with Tmobile, it's still not active. And a bill will be coming soon, for services I have never been able to use.

I still have one or two electronic devices that work, so I'm not going to jinx it by citing them by name. I am at this point a complete believer in electronic voodoo. I have had a magic touch for a long time. Some people heal - I seem to have an electromagnetic power of electronics destruction, destined to only be unleashed at the most crucial of moments.

This isn't funny anymore, technology. Shape up, or I'm shipping out to a quiet island, never to see you again. I'll try my luck with the coconut trees.