With this Christmas has come a new and bizarre twist: Tickle Me Elmo. It seems that for some reason that defies all logic, every two-year old on Earth wants one. The problem is that there aren't enough out there to go around... Anyone who didn't sleep through Economics 101 may see what I am getting at here... Everywhere, it seems, there are reports of these cute(?) little stuffed toys being snapped up and resold for just a little bit more dough than they were bought for...
In fact, there are some less than perfectly sane people (aren't we all?) paying several thousand bucks for these ticklish little suckers. A recent AltaVista search showed that there were several thousand of these things being sold on the Internet, at an average price of $300, ten times more than the $30 street price. It seems that nobody can find them in the stores (but we have to wonder just how many people would be daring enough to venture into those parts of the store without making sure their life insurance is paid up) but everyone needs to make sure they're being a good parent by making sure that Junior has one waiting under the tree for him. Somehow, I doubt that 20 years from now, there will be that very many inamtes in the State Penitentary saying that they turned to a life of crime due to "Elmo deprivation." From what I have seen of the thing, it is just plain ANNOYING. I would be willing to bet that more than a few flustered parents are going to be asking themselves why they paid $500 for the things come the day after Christmas.
If you read my column often, then you most likely have a good idea of how silly I believe life in general to be. You may have also seen my little offhand remark at the end of last weeks column about selling off everything in the den to buy one of these fuzzy giggleboxes. A comment produced in sarcasm, as are many others in this column. Yet somehow, fate had to throw this one right back in my face. Last Friday, as I returned home from work, I was greeted by a sound worse than the most sickening thud that the dew on the ground could fall with (apologies to Douglas Adams)... It was a laughing sound. Not just the sound of laughing, but something more sinister than that. It was coming from a Tickle Me Elmo... and it was sitting on our dining room table.
Naturally, my instinct was to pull out the nearest available artillery and fire at close range, but I thought better of it for several reasons. First of all, if I blew up the dining room, my Mom may have gotten a little angry. Second, firing weapons that large at close range may have caused me personal harm (although that hasn't stopped me in the past... Of course, the weapons were foam-based at the time. In fact, there was one woman out there who won a contest, earning the opportunity to blast Elmo with a machine gun. I just hope no small kids were watching, wouldn't want them to get any ideas...) Third, there was the possibility of being able to make a few bucks off of this thing. I will not get into the details of how the thing managed to get here, but I will suffice it to say that it was purchased at the so-called "regular" price of $30.
We have tried selling the sucker locally for $250, and so far, we have no takers. Perhaps this is because there may actually be a few people out there in the Seattle area with some semblance of sanity in their head (I just don't happen to work with any of them.) I will keep you posted on the Elmo saga here in my column as new developments arise. BTW, this week's column is brought to you by the letter "S" and the number 23.
Ok, now that I have that little episode in the struggle for sanity out of the way, I can proceed with this week's Sledgehammer. Anyway, as is farily obvious to anyone who isn't living in a cave, the holidays are upon us once again. With that comes a lot of new and neato techno-gadgets that we will be putting into our computers, enabling us to create new and exciting IRQ and DMA conflicts like we have never been able to before. We will be loading gigabytes of new software onto our hard drives, only to find that we are about 24 megs of RAM short to be able to run any of it. And when all of this happens, we will be calling tech support to try to ask someone else why in the heck this stuff isn't working right.
Keane, the company I work for, supports several MS products other than Win95. Many of our Win95 technicians have began to take calls for Plus and Internet Exploder, and we also support Publisher and Microsoft games. During the holiday season, games support swells from 8 to almost 60 people. 'Nuff said. Games are probably the most common computer-related gifts to be given during the holiday season. They also tend to be the ones that cause the most system hassles. Hmmm... Maybe you can get that guy you really don't like something that his system can't handle, then see how much he likes you after that. Maybe you could get him something multiplayer, and blow him to smithereens on a regular basis. It works for us.
With computers becoming a more mainstream item than ever before, these mass-produced Pandora's boxes will surely be found under many a Christmas tree this year. The trees of the luddites will be no exception, much to the chagrin of the tech support operations of the world. In particular, I feel sorry for the tech support guys who work for the OEMs who saddle them with the herculean task of supporting the most ridiculously hacked versions of Win95. They have to deal with both the users, and the incomptetents over in development who seem to have nothing better to do with their time than to make sure that the operating systems have no user-servicable parts in them. If you find a Compaq or Packard Bell under the tree, do yourself a favor. reach out and LART someone.
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