Spooky Tech Nightmares and Horror Stories, Grab your Flashlights Kids
by BW 2.0 Staff
The BlackWeb20.com staff wants to share our spookiest tech-gone-wrong and worst dream stories with you. (We think tech nightmares are worse than ghosts and goblins.)
My worst tech nightmare happened in 2007. I had just bought Dead Rising for Xbox 360. I rushed home and popped the game in, ready to engage in some serious zombie genocide. I’m sitting through the intro, damned near salivating at the massacre to come, snapping pictures of the carnage with Frank’s trusty camera. Then IT happened. Three cheery red rings lit up around the console power button and all went dark. I screamed in utter anguish, I’d been pwned by the infamous Xbox 360 “Red Rings of Death” error. But that was only the beginning of the horror. My whole hard drive was fried. As I frantically and futilely press the on button, I came to the slow realization that my console was dead and I had to buy a whole new Xbox 360. Meaning I forked out $500 I wasn’t ready to pay. Arrrgh!!!!! My teeth still gnash at the thought!
My worst tech nightmare happened my senior year in college. Our teacher separated us into groups of four to complete our “final project”, building a functioning online bookstore from scratch. The project was worth more than more than 50% of our final grade, if we didn’t pass, we didn’t graduate. We decided to separate the project into sections and divvy it up amongst the group members. One of my fellow group members and I were responsible for the coding and database design, while other group members worked on documentation and the final presentation. The group member who was supposed to help me with the coding, never completed any of the tasks he was assigned, nor did he answer his phone and email. Needless to say, my group members and I worked many sleepless nights during the 4 weeks leading up to the presentation. The day before the presentation was the worst, I spent almost 12 hours debugging the code, and went to the presentation with absolutely no sleep. And then at almost 2 in the morning –it happened! I received the phone call that almost 5 years later still makes me sick. The person who was supposed to help me with the coding called, and said “How’s it coming?”, “Need any help?”. Now I don’t advocate violence, but if I did…, but I digress. The day of the presentation, a few minutes before class begins, this guy shows up to class bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with one of the largest Kool-Aid smiles I’ve ever seen, and the he said it… “So…which part do you all want me to present?”
Don’t get me wrong I love traveling for conferences but the more you travel, the more likely you are to encounter a Tech Nightmare. My worst tech nightmare happened to me earlier this year when I was speaking at the Social Networking Conference in Miami. All was well. The flight there was perfect, so was location and hotel. Like all good techies, the night before I was scheduled to speak, I was going through the checklist of what I needed to be prepared: Twice over my deck…check; laptop charging…check; MAC adapter for the projector…check. Everything was perfect. I slept like a baby and was over at the convention center refreshed and ready to go well before my talk was scheduled to start. I sat in on a lot of other presentations, tweeted from some, relocated to others, and tried to resume tweeting when….”Oh Sh*t!!!!” My computer wouldn’t start, at all, nothing. Since I charged it the night before I knew that couldn’t be the problem, but I tried plugging in and charging…nothing. I called Markus panicked since I couldn’t access my presentation, I had sent it over to the organizers prior but made some last minute changes the night before. Good ole Markus told me to calm down and to continue to charge up (I swear he is the calmest dude I’ve met). I did but as the hours turned to minuets before I was supposed to speak I started to sweat and become extremely anxious. Especially since I was so certain battery power wasn’t the issue. Soon enough my time came to speak and I turned on my computer and the clouds of heaven opened up as I saw my computer start to load and eventually make it’s way to my desktop (cue the singing angels). Once fully loaded I checked the battery indicator, sure enough the laptop had been dead. This was an important lesson learned. While you sleep in strange places make sure the outlet you are using to charge your valuable possessions actually works. And at worst case ALWAYS, ALWAYS, have a battery backup.
Rahsheen shudders at the thought of…
Facebook buys all other social media sites. Shuts them all down and incorporates their features. Now, we are doomed to get our social media fix exclusively from Facebook, peppered with Mafia Wars invites, creepy friend suggestions, invites to stuff you have absolutely no interest in, and nonsense quizzes.
Jabari Johnson’s hair stands on end in dread of…
The scariest thing that could happen to me is the keys on my Macbook Pro going out. This has happened before and it is truly a nightmare to have to use the on screen keyboard by clicking keys with the mouse! Those moments until you can get your hands on an external keyboard or get it fixed are the worst!
Last year, I received a phone call from Spike Lee’s office while I was at the shampoo bowl at the hair salon. I couldn’t ignore the call, so I lifted my head up to take the call as soapy water drenched down into my ear and into my earpiece. Two weeks later, I noticed that I couldn’t recharge my phone, leaving me to believe I simply needed a new battery. I took the phone into the carrier’s store only to find out that the battery had corroded causing irreparable damage to the phone. The greatest inconvenience caused by the corrosion was the loss of 400+ phone numbers (business connects, journalists, editors, etc.) that I had not backed up. Thankfully, the carrier’s repair guy was able to do something and lend me a temporary battery with just enough juice for me to sit in the store with my laptop and type every last number -with a fury- into a Word doc with the help of a friend. Lesson learned: back up the phone numbers especially if you don’t have a smartphone.
What is your spookiest, scariest, or just plain frustrating tech nightmare?
Category: Tech Humor, web 2.0 | Tags: halloween, spooky tech stories, Technology nightmaresDid you like this article? Share It!
