ADDing Up

Several years ago, in an article about people's activities when they're not happy with how their environment is working, I came across a word for the action of pushing the elevator button two or three times on the implicit assumption that it will make the elevator come faster. The word was 'elevaccelator'. I know that feeling, and its many brethren.

My work PC can be maddeningly slow. I think its a combination of not enough memory and bloated applications (yes, Lotus Notes, I'm tawkin bout choo). Of course, what it takes to be maddeningly slow varies according to how quickly I want to get something done, but on average I find that if it takes more than two seconds to do something -- run a calculation, switch applications, bring up a web page -- I start rocking back and forth in my seat, glaring at the screen, drumming on the plastic shell of the laptop. Right where there is a crack, for some reason.

Whats particularly infuriating is when I make matters worse by thinking that well, this spreadsheet is taking for-freakin-ever to update, so I'll just go look at email....and it takes thirty seconds to switch to email (extra points when the calculation completes and then I get whipped away before I can see the result). Sometimes I'll think well, hell, email isn't starting, I'll go look at the web...which then has to wait for the task switch to occur, which has to wait for email to finish loading, which has to wait for...

And they say kids are the ones with ADD.....