Category Archives: Technology

The Technological Plateau of the Microwave Oven

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So I bought a new high-tech microwave oven yesterday: the LG 0.9 cu. ft. NeoChef Countertop Microwave with Smart Inverter and EasyClean.

This is the first time I have ever purchased a microwave, and I think I did okay overall, but my expectations about what a modern microwave should do are apparently way too high. Why can’t it cook my food in 10 seconds? Why can’t it clean itself? Why can’t it connect to the Internet and buzz my smartphone when my food is ready? Why can’t the microwave door double as a television screen?

Come on, it’s 2017—we have self-driving cars and drones… why do I have to wait an entire 2 minutes for my frozen gourmet burritos to finish cooking??!

And another thing… microwave ovens have been around for like 50 years, so shouldn’t they cook faster by now? The only futuristic thing about this microwave is that it looks sleek and fancy, and it plays these stupid little songs in digitized chimes whenever my food is done cooking:

Not only are these features incredibly disappointing from technological standpoint, but the songs it plays are eerily similar to the songs that my training potty used to play when I was a small child. This has rendered a highly distressing psychological response from me whenever my food is ready to eat.

Oh yeah, it also has something called Smart Inverter Technology, whatever the hell that is. I think it’s for making yogurt or something stupid like that—who cares!!! I want 10 second gourmet burritos, damnit! How much longer are we going to have to wait for somebody to get off their ass and figure this stuff out?

Also, can I please turn these songs off already, or maybe download some new ringtones or something?!? I haven’t eaten in more than 24 hours!

Friends with Facebook

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Facebook recently asked me if I think that it cares about me:

This isn’t weird at all.

Maybe I’m supposed to say that it would be better if we were just friends? Wait… that can’t be right—friends with Facebook..? Is this some sort of screwy social networking joke?

Customer Service Mega-Blunders

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Sometimes, when you buy a new monitor from Dell, it doesn’t power on. So the next step is, naturally, to send it back and ask for a replacement.

However, sometimes, when you receive a replacement monitor from Dell, it comes in a different sort of box that doesn’t have the same markings as the box that a new monitor comes in (red flag numero uno).

Then, sometimes, when you open this different sort of box, you find a monitor inside that looks like it was run over by a forklift.

This happened to me. To add insult to injury, the different sort of box the monitor was shipped in was completely undamaged, meaning that the monitor could not possibly have sustained any of the corresponding impact(s) during shipment.

Perhaps there are trained gorillas running Dell’s Returns Centers? One of them took time out of his workday to carefully pack a completely destroyed monitor for shipping back to an already pissed off customer. All the requisite cardboard and foam packaging materials were there, including video and electrical cables, installation discs, manuals, and other miscellaneous items.

What’s most confounding about an experience like this is that, due to Dell’s overwhelming presence in the marketplace as a computer hardware manufacturer, it is not really reasonable for a technologist to write off Dell products. In my case, I get to try harder not to buy Dell products, which will sometimes be an exercise in futility. In fact, it could potentially create further disservices to myself and to others I would purchase hardware for, resulting in even greater losses in productivity.

Sadly, it’s pretty much a certainty that at some point in the not-too-distant future I will need to purchase something that Dell makes. And to further contribute to the mounting dismay, there is a good probability that this item will also be ordered in bulk—that is, quantities in at least the dozens, but possibly hundreds.

Life Paradoxes and Modern Tragedies

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One of the reasons this website exists is to help provide an extra amount of clarity and perspective in the Information Age we live in, where technology and social media have eradicated many important forms of personal identity and privacy, and done so over the course of only a handful of years. To put it a different way, ChadSpace reminds me that I’m truly one of a kind, and also serves as an online journal of sorts for others to enjoy my amazing and thought-provoking insights in ways that perhaps contribute to their own less-interesting ideas.

So here are two nuts that I just can’t keep squirreled away any longer:

01) Should I resolve to keep what I already have in my life intact, healthy and increasingly prosperous when it’s good, and when it’s enough, or should I march down the path of personal ambition and selfish change because that’s what the majority does? I have found that by doing the former, many people who were once a regular part of my life are somehow becoming more distant—people who I wish could slow down and readily acknowledge the treasures that are right in front of them. Yet, when I do the latter, I have discovered that I oftentimes create new avenues for these people to reassert their presences in my life, and simultaneously meet new friends while realizing my own untapped potentials. And while this seems like the obvious choice, the net disharmony in the world increases whenever a person shuns or abandons something that works and is positive for an opportunity to gain something more.

02) Why is it that Facebook and YouTube get so much money for being the most popular public landfills on the Internet? Facebook is a lot like the garbage truck that comes once a week, taking all of your empty milk jugs and coffee grinds, and YouTube is like the city dump that only accepts large items, like old refrigerators, microwave ovens, and rusted-out car engines. This sometimes makes me wonder how much capital and technical resources in Silicon Valley are committed to ensuring the successful revisitation of a shitty eight-year-old meme, and on-demand viewing of some asshat playing a really bad version of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony on a cheap ukelele.