Modern life is rubbish, Part 3,223

I sometimes wonder how I ever managed to find the time to do a job. Take today, for example. It’s not as if I had a whole ton of stuff to do, but my primary task was to take the computer in for its long-needed repair. Having checked the Best Buy website to find out what time the “Geek Squad” repair people were in place, I found it was 10am. So, first, I drove over to Bayshore to do a quick pick up, arriving at just after 10 at Best Buy. Best Buy was, indeed, open: the only problem was that the Geek Squad department didn’t open till 11. So, I waited, using much of the time to wander around looking at advertisements for the type of computer I have, which seem to promise so much yet deliver so little. Let me really tell you what I am in search of....
 
At 10:55, I wandered over to the appropriate place and found out, miraculously, that a small queue had formed. I waited some more. Then I explained my problem to the man at the desk. “I am the victim of a Windows update,” I said. “My computer no longer has any sound.” He looked at me with the dead eyes of a techie and said, “you and the rest of Ottawa,” or words to that effect. Then he spent the best part of an hour trying to “unroll the roll out of the update”, to no avail.
 
“I’m going to have to send it back to the factory for a reset,” he said. At 12:30pm, having handed over the laptop and signed numerous forms, I drove home. Thankfully, there was still an extended warranty on the laptop, which saved me paying out of pocket expenses. However, the question still begs asking. What in the hell is Microsoft doing to my computer? The updates were enforced – there was no way of preventing them, they started when I turned on in the morning. My laptop no longer communicates with my scanner, my printer or my external DVD drive. And people accept it and think it is normal. Well, it isn’t. I paid more than a thousand dollars for those three pieces of technology: I didn’t “rent” or “lease” them, I bought them. And I bought them with the expectation that they would be useable on the laptop I had until they stopped working mechanically. Not, that an enforced technology would prevent me from using them and would make me buy them all again.
 
So, no doubt audibly tutting under my breath, I drove home, dusted off my 2013 Sony Vaio, and tried to remember all the passwords for all the sites I use on a regular basis. Then Mrs. Ottawacker decided we should go to Costco, as my day hadn’t been exciting enough. Then I made dinner.