items of technology that have failed lately

[cimorene]

• My camera, which gave up the ghost in early October.


• All the USB ports on my motherboard except the one my mouse is plugged into. The other ones work sometimes, but it can be intermittent. (We bought a USB hub a few weeks ago, but we lost it before taking it out of the package. Sigh.)


• My keyboard (we have a spare which is from the mid-90s and rather heavy-duty, but since it seems to be indestructible, I think I'll just stay with it)


• The touch-sensitive power button on Darth Vader the monitor. About half the time since its failure a week ago, if left on at night he will wake up in the morning without incident when the computer is turned on. Otherwise he has to be unplugged, and then the X server rebooted to get the right monitor resolution.


• Viol, my ipod. I've had her for, I think, almost 3 years exactly. She was a lovely light purple 2-gig shuffle, and I may be the only person I've met who actually prefers a shuffle to a larger ipod: I only ever want to listen to 1 playlist at a time, and I like being able to push the buttons by feel with my gloves on when I'm out walking. Anyway, we have an old pre-video nano, Omena, which works except for the LCD display. So it's like a giant shuffle, really, except that there's no way to see what you're doing to turn the shuffle function on and off.


• Yesterday the washing machine started emitting a toasty smell in the midst of the 3rd load. I turned it off, not knowing what else to do, but it'd better not break when I still have like 2 loads of sheets & another load of random shit to wash.