I was going to title this post “The Johnny Astro Syndrome.” Dr. Zal and my wonderful wife will understand the reference, but I will have to explain it to the rest of you.
When I was very young I once bought a toy called Johnny Astro. I did not grow up with money so I could not buy toys whenever I wanted. My next-door neighbor, son of the awful neighbor I wrote about here and no prize himself, bought the same toy the same day from the same store. His Johnny Astro worked, mine didn’t.
In my teens I began to refer to all of the “crap gone wrong” in my life as the Johnny Astro Syndrome. Maybe I am just hyper-sensitive to the things that go wrong in life, but it seemed to me as though I could almost never have an experience where everything went smoothly from A to Z. It seemed to me as if other people did enjoy those experiences.
An example: I bought Grover Washington Jr.’s album “Mister Magic.” However, when I opened the package it was actually an album by a group called the Dowlings. No one I knew had ever had that happen to them.
Another example: when we moved into a brand new house in Texas I had DirecTV installed as I had been a subscriber for about four years. I had to have NFL Sunday Ticket. For the first two weeks everything was fine, but then the receiver in the media room would just re-boot itself at random times. Calls to customer service proved futile as the representatives did not believe me when I said I was not re-booting the receiver. Finally after a few weeks, after raising my voice and demanding a supervisor, a tech was sent and fixed the problem, which he said was caused by an improper install. These are just two of what I would swear are hundreds of examples of crap gone wrong.
OK, so why am I writing about this today? I mentioned that I purchased Action! PC Football and was going to open the envelope containing the flash drive with the game. What I haven’t told you is that I paid more money for a flash drive version because the last two years I purchased the game via download it took multiple installs to get the game to work.
Guess what? The flash drive was blank. When I placed it in a USB port my computer displayed a message asking me if I wanted to format the disk, a sign that it was blank. In any event, if I had formatted the flash drive any data on it would have been erased.
I am also writing about this today because this is supposed to be the day I take my 2016 Corvette Z06 to a “speed shop.” This shop is going to perform some intake and exhaust modifications designed to squeeze some more horsepower and torque out of the engine without voiding the powertrain warranty. Can you understand why my primary feeling right now is one of anxiety and not of excitement?
Keeping my fingers crossed, metaphorically and not literally, that my car will be alright.
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I’ll be interested to hear the end of the story on getting the flash drive replaced. It took three drones to get one working and hours of tech support online when I first bought my Mavic Air drone. They worked just fine but refused to download the latest airspace data configurations.
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Thanks, sir. “Progress” isn’t always a good thing. As I have written, I used to play these statistical-based sports games beginning when I was a teenager with just cards, charts, dice and a notebook. I didn’t have to worry about blank flash/thumb drives and bad installs on a computer.
I’m sure the company will send me a new flash/thumb drive, but at this point the wind is out of my sails.
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Buy a lottery ticket! There’s no way you can have two “Johnny Astro” experiences in the same day, so either you’ll win a million bucks and can fix whatever they screw up with your car, or you’ll blow $2, but you’ll guarantee your car will be modded correctly!
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LOL! The Johnny Astro Syndrome bows to no one, though, not even to fate, karma or probability.
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I opened my front door, the door knob fell off. I picked up my briefcase, the handle fell off. I’m afraid to go to the bathroom.
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LOL! Thanks, Rodney.
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Do you really need more power? Maybe get to the
next stoplight half a second sooner. Leave well
enough alone. A steady reader.
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First, the job has already been completed. Second, to use an old joke: Why does a male dog lick its balls? Because he can.
I think a life spent only doing the things one needs to do is not a life well-spent.
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