Sick Day XXVIII

Sorry for the lack of a usual sick day photo. Yesterday I wrote about how minimal buttons and knobs were getting on electronic equipment. I am of the age where more is better. I’d like my equipment to look like a Moog Synthesizer. I’m a control freak as far as electronics go. I’d like to mess with more than one function at a time.

I could go on and on about it, but let me digress to something else that makes me sick, this is a sick day post after all. OK I’m sick of red and blue lights. I have a wireless router that has these blue lights that constantly flash on top of it. I walked down stairs in the dark one night and I thought it was a reflection of a police car outside, but no it was my router looking like the mother ship taking off.

I got some peripherals for my wife’s laptop and as soon as you plug any of them in, they flash either red or blue. Again, what is it with red and blue? What happened to the soothing green lights of yester-year? Is soothing out? It isn’t enough for a light to show you things are operational, they have to flash and make you feel like the police are coming or that there is imminent danger in your face. Even my lap top has blue flashing lights.

I mean, for Christ sake, I'm in the safety of my living room. I'm not in East LA. I do not need to see flashing red and blue lights when I'm watching Jeopardy.

One tid-bit of computer history is that the first PCs weren’t supposed to have any lights, but they put one in when the hard drive was spinning so people would know the computer was on and working.

So far the industry’s obsession with blue lights makes me want to get more black electrical tape. The laptops, peripherals, the router and the new radio in the truck are all getting taped.