Computers! What are they?

The Lilly Pond.

I arrived home from my walk yesterday afternoon to find that for some reason or other my internet was not working. of course my first reaction was to run all the usual tests reset the router and so. All to no avail. I reboot the computer to see if that might fire the router back into action.

It is always a good thing to remember about devices and gadgets, if they go wrong give them a restart because that so often solves the problem

A bit like being an artist or a creative writer. if you hit a block, and we all do from time to time. Have a reboot, go back to something you are very familiar with. So often this removes the block and we are back in flow.

About two hours later everything seemed to be back to normal and the first thing I saw was this.

"A BT spokesman said: "Large numbers of customers have been experiencing temporary issues with their broadband services this afternoon. Customers can still receive and make calls as normal.

"We've been working hard to fix the issue and are glad to report that nearly every customer affected is now reconnected, approximately two hours after the problem started."

later on the in article it said that a female comedian had tweeted to BT, "Dear BT have you tried turning your server off for ten seconds then back on?"

Yes give it a reboot we all need one from time to time.

I was sitting later just quietly thinking about how much we depend on computers, how lost we are when they do not work. 

I remembered the little story of the teacher of French. She was explain the difference between male and female nouns in the French Language.

E.g. 'house' is feminine – 'la maison', 'Pencil' is masculine – 'le crayon'. 

A student asked, 'what gender is 'computer'? 

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into 2 groups –male and female and asked them to decide for themselves whether 'computer' should be a masculine or feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for the recommendations.

Here is the end responses from the two groups.

The male  group decided that 'computer' should definitely be of the feminine gender (la computer), because:

• No one but their creator understands their internal logic.

• The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.

• Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for immediate later retrieval. And...
• 
  
• As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your available finances on accessories for it.

The female group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine (le computer), because:

• In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on.

• They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves.

• They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time, they ARE the problem, And...

• As soon as you commit to one, you realise that if you had waited a little longer, you could have got a better model.

I make no judgement on either position I simply leave you with the thought. I certainly know what gender my computer is and some of either of those lists has brought me to that conclusion. My computer has a name, as do all my devices for ease of use. My computer is called, "Gandalf."