This sort of thing happens to me all the time. Usually I don't like to believe in concepts like 'luck' or 'karma', but when I am fixing machines (I run a small business called WCI Technologies), I can't count the number of times people just can't get errors to occour in front of me, even if they have 'been happening all the time'. There has been a time or two when I've taken a computer back to my office, done absolutley nothing-- (because I couldn't get it to do what they said)-- returned it to them, and the problems never happen again.

When I were a radar technician in the Royal Danish Air Force, we had this Senior Tactical Control Assistant (TCA). He was a voluminous and authoritative, but friendly Master Sergeant. We had quite a few radars standing around, of which one was a Range Only Radar (ROR). The Operations Branch personnel often performed the daily checks on the equipment, so they didn't have to wait for the lazy Maintenance Branch guys to do it for them (that would be me).

In the beginning, the two got along just fine, but at some point, things started to go terribly wrong. At first, it was just a couple of isolated equipment malfunctions, but soon the ROR would "flip on its back and convulse," whenever he went anywhere near it. It finally got to the point that the defacto procedure was to send someone else, if anything needed to be done to that particular radar.

The funny thing is that, to my knowledge, this was the only piece of equipment that didn't like our Senior TCA. If you think of it for a while, it becomes clear that approaching a piece of equipment with aversion may be the decisive (and obviously self-amplifying) factor.

People who operate machines with reluctance, fear, loathing or bitter hatrid are the ones who have all the problems. It's probably real. The fearsome operator will subconsciously do things the confident user wouldn't. Hesitance may lead to erratic input. Lack of confidence will increase the need to verify equipment status. We statistically verified and proved this last assertion in the Air Force - you can actually test equipment so much it breaks.

My thesis is this: Confident users put less strain on equipment, not because they have "better karma," but because of the way they physically operate it. Less confident users do a lot of redundant things that are potentially harmful to the hardware or software (more intput == higher CPU temperature). Equipment is built to withstand scenarios of typical use better than illogical, chaotic use. Software is tested the exact same way - hence, an insecure user who provides erratic input, out of sequence with the intended use, will invoke otherwise hidden bugs. Since the errors often emerge from a combination of hardware and software factors, they may be very hard to reproduce.

All this is just yet another consequence of the fact that your attitude reflects upon your actions, which determine the reactions you get, which influence your attitude. That's how the wrong attitude can become self-amplifying. Incidentally, being a successful psychologist is about changing one or more variables in the loop, and thus allow patients to break out of inappropriate behavioral patterns. But that's another story...

I used to be the sole MIS support for about 200 PC's spread all over central Texas. It would have been way too much work for one person without the help of karma. Most things just started working in my presence. But if that wasn't enough, and I couldn't find the problem in a quick exploration onsite, I'd take the defective equipment and load it into my van and just leave them there for a few days while I drove around doing my job. Most of the time that did the trick.

Karma is good. I don't have it any more. My son Wonko stole it from me. But that's okay. He'll just have to pay me back by fixing my computer problems for the rest of my life.

:)

I've had lots of personal experience with this, and not limited to personal computers. Based on my experience and observation I have a slightly different theory: Personal magnetic fields.

For several years in mainly elementry school and into Jr, High I was in capable of wearing digital watches. Just by putting a watch on my wrist it would get messed up, withing minutes. I wouldn't bump the recessed set button, I could be watching tv, or playing with legos or something, and I'd check to see what time it was and it'd be blinking as if I were setting it, and the time and date would be completely wrong as if reset to the default time/date. I've had computers error/crash or suddenly work right literally once I walked into the room or got within a certain distance of the computer in question.

Now for my theory... The human nervous system generates electrical impulses when sending information throughout the body. As things like sweat glands and heartrate and other measurable physical attributes change based on a person's mental state, the magnetic field a person generates is also influenced by what one is thinking or feeling. What if people disrupt electronic devices or fix a disruption based on their presence? As in the Fear and loathing comment, Attitude may play a large role in this. if you go to use your computer with confidence and a calm attitude you might be generating an even, consistant field, but if you were nervous you might be generating an fluctuating and erratic field which could cause computer problems.

Just my humble theory.

That's very interesting, and it certainly coincides with my experiences. I've always been very confident with computers (and I've been wearing digital watches without incident since I was a kid). Perhaps there's some truth to this theory.

I know serval people who can't touch shit without breaking them. These people of which I speak are even programmers. Rule of thumb; Don't let bitches touch your machine. Speaking of bitches. I have the exact opposite karma where I touch computers and they throb under my secksee-ness and do as I command. I've made a rather efficient (regardless of how half-assed mr grove thinks it is) career out of this computer/man-love relationship. Speaking of mr grove, I'm pretty content running Microsnots shit on my computer. Windows XP came with a truck-ton of convience, once I waded past all the built in moose-shit that is the heart and soul of microsoft. By moose-shit I mean msn messenger, that bullshit activator crap, and lastly that error reporting elephant dick juice. Speaking of elephant dick juice, is it supposed to be "myth or reality" or "fact or fiction" because that would make it sound more like that one demi-cool TV show with the bearded dude from Star Trek that directed that movie Clockstoppers. Speaking of Frakes, I'd be interested in finding a copy of that microsoft sponsored study that willy wonko speaks about. I don't suppose any one would know where such a document could be obtained? Speaking of willy, I'm probably going to stop typing shortly as my high is fading and I'm running out of things to say. Oh shit, it's about to happen, oh gawd.. help.. tell my mo

I've made a rather efficient (regardless of how half-assed mr grove thinks it is) career out of this computer/man-love relationship.

On the contrary, Mr. Pothead Joe! I think you've done an incredible job of tricking people into giving you money over the years. Especially our mutual acquaintance Mr. Eric Stoltz. Or was that Billy Stoltz. Or Bobby. Nevermind.

In any case, I am in awe of your throbbing computer secksee-ness. I don't think I've ever met anyone who had trouble completing a thought and yet could still trick people out of their money so efficiently. Bravo, sir.

which mail server did you setup? i'm having some issues with qmail under freebsd myself. heh.

I use Sendmail and UW-IMAP.

Having discussed my idea with several people, nobody has yet been able to argue or say anything to displrove it.. which is why I'm using the concept for the base of a story I've been developing. Maybe someday I'll actually get it written.

my experiences with computers and stability havent been so horrible , till i went out and bought a dell instead of building a pc like i wanted to .. the lamers sent me a machine with bad ram .. i didnt realize it till win2k pro which never ever blue screened on any other box i ever ran , crashed miserably every few hours , needless to say i was angry .. i decided to turn off all the memory dump options rather than replace the ram , my tendency is usually to just increase the problems so i can fix them later , since i love blowin up my computers jus to pity the poor things and fix them some other time
my uptime record on this box im currently running is about 70 days , i shut it down for a hardware install then never wanted to go for uptime records again till i at least replaced that ram stick (chuckles) that comment wonko posted about bad karma probably applies to me , but i do tend to beta test alot of software , as well as just installing every and any app i can find just for the sake of knowing what it is .. one day im just gonna install the needed software and let my machine live =] .. but probably not till the 2 pcs i plan on building this year are up and running
.. till next time

my experiences with computers and stability havent been so horrible , till i went out and bought a dell instead of building a pc like i wanted to .. the lamers sent me a machine with bad ram .. i didnt realize it till win2k pro which never ever blue screened on any other box i ever ran , crashed miserably every few hours , needless to say i was angry .. i decided to turn off all the memory dump options rather than replace the ram , my tendency is usually to just increase the problems so i can fix them later , since i love blowin up my computers jus to pity the poor things and fix them some other time
my uptime record on this box im currently running is about 70 days , i shut it down for a hardware install then never wanted to go for uptime records again till i at least replaced that ram stick (chuckles) that comment wonko posted about bad karma probably applies to me , but i do tend to beta test alot of software , as well as just installing every and any app i can find just for the sake of knowing what it is .. one day im just gonna install the needed software and let my machine live =] .. but probably not till the 2 pcs i plan on building this year are up and running
.. till next time

wtf , i hit post once , sorry wonko =\maybe i should crumble a bit and install a new internet explorer , this one isnt really a new version (i think its IE 4 .. (chuckles)