My girlfriend is wonky and I mean that in the nicest way. I don’t mean that one of her arms is bigger than the other, or that her left eye is slightly disproportionate to the right one. I’m referring to the fact that every time I let her borrow my computer she leaves it in the most bizarre of states.
Being quite anal about my computer being straight and nice-looking (like all those pictures I see on Lifehacker), I’ve found myself in a situation where I have OCD-like symptoms about keeping the computer and keyboard straight, with my iPhone kept neatly on charge next to it, and Apple Remote neatly placed on the iMac’s stand (horizontal and perfectly aligned to the edge, of course). That’s not mentioning the software, where I have to keep my Safari window a certain distance from the menu bar and dock at all time, for example.
For some reason, though, my girlfriend has other ideas. I let her borrow my computer for the day and come back finding the keyboard at the weirdest of angles, iPhone cable hanging freely off the edge of the desk, and all my beautifully arranged application windows scattered carelessly over six “Spaces” (virtual desktops) with no regard for their position on the screen; I found my Mail.app window minimized on Space 4 once, positioned halfway off the edge of the screen – it opens by default on Space 2 and can’t be moved unless done so deliberately.
What have I done to deserve this? What did I do in my past life? Did I murder children? Was I the guy who murdered Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, starting World War One? Was I the person at ITV who commissioned the new series of X Factor *shudder*?
I know I’m not the best boyfriend. I know that checking my iPhone behind your back when I hug you isn’t romantic. I know that reading Gizmodo can wait until you’ve gone home… But I’m a geek! You knew that the moment you took me on! As I’m someone who frequently refers to themselves as a ‘WebMaster‘, how can you not understand that the computer is my domain!? That the internet is my Empire!?
If I turned up at your house and started to move one of the windows, you’d be pretty annoyed, wouldn’t you? And I know full well that I don’t turn up at your house and repaper your walls with a pixellated picture of Hello Kitty that I found on Google Image Search. So why do you do it to my computer!? WHY!? For all us alpha-geeks out there, I send this message to women who make out lives a burden; stop messing up my computer! Gah! It’s time us nerds took back our space from the clutches of the females and ditch the benefits of a relationship for that of a tidy workspace. Together, we can unite!

The other day I ordered an M-Audio Kestation 61ES, a MIDI keyboard thing that will let me play the piano into my computer for when I’m making music. I figured that purchasing this would help me save time writing MIDI (on ‘Unlucky For Some’ I ended up playing my computer keyboard in some songs…), and I’ve always wanted to play the piano properly; I just never had one at home to learn on. So I splashed out and spent £150 on a keyboard. However, I saw that I could get the same keyboard with a sustain pedal added on for the same price on Amazon and bought that instead. The only problem is that the Keyboard is still on it’s way to me, despite the sustain pedal arriving tomorrow. Here’s my review of the pedal.

Well, as you can tell from the picture above, it came in a box. The box is grey and red, with a picture of the pedal on it and some writing about the features of the pedal. While this isn’t the best design (look at Apple’s boxes, for example – they don’t need to tell you what the product does, even though they do a heck of a lot more), it’s far from the worst (I bought some RAM from Crucial once and it came in a brown cardboard box. Lame.)

Like a lot of other packaging on the market, this box was sealed with two pieces of sellotape. This certainly isn’t the most durable way of sealing a package, but it’s worked well over the years and you can’t fault it. After all, I wouldn’t want it to be wrapped in duct tape… that would just be hard to open.

After peeling the first piece of sellotape off, disaster struck. Unfortunately, the second piece of sellotape wouldn’t come off the package and I had to resort to using scissors to cut off the remaining piece. I don’t see why, as surely both the pieces of sellotape came from the same roll, and should have the same stickiness? I don’t know what happened here, but it’s shabby. Shame on you, M-Audio.

Finally I got the box open. Inside was the prize. I have to say, having seen the size of the pedal and the size of the box, I give M-Audio points for saving packaging. Some companies ship massive cardboard boxes for stuff like this (my Logitech MX Revolution came in quite a ridiculously over the top box, with a flap that let you see the mouse in the packaging and so on) so M-Audio did a good job on this. Since I share my name with a tree -admittedly not a tree that is used for cardboard-, I say “thank you”.

Once I took the pedal out, though, I tossed the box on the floor. Despite it’s good points, it just has no function other than storing the pedal and thus I do not care for it any longer. Goodbye box, I hardly knew ye.

So there I was, left with the pedal in a weird plasticky coating. Naturally, I took this off and…

…threw it on the floor with the box. See you in hell.

Now I had to take the weird plastic thing off the pedal. It was weird so…

…I took it off…

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…

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… And put it with the rest of the trash. Hasta la vista, baby!

Anyway, now I had my pedal almost ready to go. So I took the cord out (which was quite a struggle, since it was firmly lodged under the pedal) and untied it all.

Now I had my pedal all ready to go, except for another weird plasticky bit on the end. It was like they’d dipped it in cling film or something. Removing this proved to be a challenge…

… so I removed the rest of it with tweezers. There were still a few bits left on, despite my rigorous pulling, so that was bad. Plus points to M-Audio there. You should have used less clingy cling-film.

Once finished, I put the pedal on the floor, in it’s new home. There, it rested like a warrior who’d just come back from war; like a mouse that had just been chased by cats; like a sloth. It gave off a sense of peace and tranquility, as if everything in the world was suddenly alright. Suddenly, a strong urge came over me; something I couldn’t resist at all. It was like a true calling, echoing through space and time right to this point where I stood before the this pedal. I quickly rushed over to the other side of my room to grab an object which would help me reach fulfilment…

I plugged the pedal into my guitar. As expected, nothing happened. I shrugged. This is why you don’t listen to the thoughts you have when you’re on a hallucinogens, kids.