A bad technology day

This cartoon (from Rana and Peter's birthday card to me) seems to perfectly sum up the last hour of my life, although this time the grief wasn't due to the baffling internal mysteries of Windows.

The culprit was my Sony RCD-W3 hi-fi CD recorder which I bought from Richer Sounds at Christmas.

Today was the first time I'd needed to burn off a CD copy with the Sony, so I foolishly imagined that the operation would be breeze (what with me owning a dedicated machine for the job).

Sadly, the useless bag'o'shite was having none of it. After shunning the first three CDs offered for recording, the Sony was only prepared to acknowledge the existence of a Maxwell CDR. And then it changed its mind. And then it recognised it again.

Realising that I'd better move sharpish before the Sony changed its mind again, I hit the record button and then waited. And waited some more. I could go on but I'm sure you're already bored with this story.

Suffice to say, after an hour of faffing about I've given up trying to burn the CD.

Fearing the dreaded mantra of "we'll send it off for repair", I rang up Richer Sounds and to their massive credit seem amenable to simply swapping the machine with no fuss.

Respect. I'll sort it next week. And probably bore you with the details later....