I seem to have acquired a gang of gremlins sometime in the last 48 hours or so. The calendar app on my Android phone stopped working. A bunch of apps keep freezing and the touch screen has gotten wonky on my Android tablet. Apple doesn’t do much better. My Ipod has been having its share of challenges as well. I couldn’t get Feedly to load this morning and Facebook keeps crashing.
Gremlins are the worst kind of technical problems because they just seem to come out of nowhere. Most of the time gremlins go away without any intervention. But how do you know if a tech issue is real or a gremlin? I have no clue. But, it is why everyone starts their tech support asking about rebooting the machine. Gremlins hate getting rebooted, so that will often chase them away.
Then there are the gremlins who are tenuous enough to hang on even after rebooting. These little buggers seem to feed on stress because they tend to appear as deadlines loom. Sometimes the best way to deal with these guys is to step away from the computer. Put down the device and go get a cup of coffee. Or even better, a mug of chamomile tea. That tends to bore the gremlin and they usually wander off to find someone else to harass.
My current problem is the worst kind. I have not one, not two, but at least three gremlins haunting me right now. I think it is karmic payback for all of the gremlins I kick off other people’s machines. There was some sort of gremlin gathering where they banded together in some plot to make my life difficult.
They may have won this battle, but I’m not giving up yet. My phone was due for replacement anyway. Any day now there should be a new release candidate for my tablet’s operating system. And the Ipod? I’ll let them claim that as their victory. Especially if that will distract them for a little while so I can get some work done.