Incoherent techno-rant -- or -- Curse you, Windows Media Player 11

OK, so maybe this isn't actually my picture, but it expresses how I feel at just this moment.

This has been building for some time, actually, but the final straws were piled on the camel's back this afternoon as I tried to catch up on my time sheets.

I wanted to listen to music while working.

The music is on my hard drive. My computer is just a little over three years old, ancient I realize by contemporary standards.

But no visitor to these postings can be long unaware that I am not overly enamored of contemporary standards. That which works is fine by me, even if it is not the newest or the coolest. I do not apologize for this.

And my computer was not the coolest kid on the block even when new: It was an off the shelf generic. The only things I look for in a new computer are a generous allotment of RAM according to standards extant on date of purchase and a generous hard drive according to those same standards. That way, I used to think, I'd get full service from the machine until software "improvements" made it necessary to upgrade.

Thank you, Mr. Gates.

I have since learned that I must also look for generous video memory, but I'm not playing games on this poor machine and I don't want to get off the subject here. Indeed, I want to go home.

I have listened to the music on my computer with Windows Media Player 10 for some time. Recently, I had occasion to download Windows Media Player 11.

And I've known no peace since.

The music is no better, and certainly no louder (which no doubt is a consolation to my office mates). But the program takes f....o....r....e....v....e....r to load and it s.....l.....o.....w.....s everything else on the machine down to a snail's pace.

For what?

Now, I can understand that some new programs do new things and require more memory and more storage space. But this program plays music. Just as did its predecessor.

So why in tarnation does it eat up so much of my poor old computer's memory, thus destroying any semblance of performance?

Please answer me, O technogeeks in cyberspace: Why isn't this program more compact, more condensed, more efficient? Wouldn't that constitute progress?

But this is only one of my technical complaints at present: You may have noticed I've added a couple of geegaws to this page. A "Page Rank" button, for example. I read Susan's February 4 post and followed all the links and learned about the evils of "sandboxing" and blogrolling and all sorts of things I didn't know were problematic. One linked article suggested that, if you must link to someone's blog, make sure they're at least a page rank 4 (PR 4). Sounded rather snobby to me... but insecure sort that I am, I had to find out where I stood.

And I was so relieved! I, too, was a PR 4. So I installed the button. To show off, I guess.

And this weekend, when I was checking my email I looked at my blog... and now I was a PR 0.

It was a devastating rejection. What had I done? Who had I offended? (Today, it seems to be a PR 4... but my confidence is shot....)

And then I put in a "subscribe in a reader button" because I read somewhere that this is a way to boost readership. But I have no idea what it does or what subscription means in this context. I visit blogs that visit me -- the ones that link to me first, either in a sidebar or as identified through Technorati. But that involves using a blogroll that makes me "look like a linkfarm." This, apparently is bad. I also visit the blogs of people that leave comments. I haven't been told exactly why this is wrong yet, but I'm sure I'll find an article soon that says this also is right out.

I know I claim to be a dinosaur -- and I prove it from time to time -- but I'm trying to evolve... and this technology, hardware and software alike, seems determined to keep me from keeping up.

Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrgggghhhhhh! (*Swinging club now*)