Citizen Azeroth: It's the frog's fault

In the space of a week and a half, I've had to replace both my monitor and my sound card.

And it's all the frog's fault.

When I left my dot-com job back in 2002, I received a gift from one of my co-workers (I also received three resumes on my desk when people heard I was leaving to go into business for myself). This co-worker was another techie, and he was giving me his most prized possession: a small rubber tree frog. "If I keep this on my computer," he said, "I never have technical problems."

And damn it, the frog works -- as long as it's kept on the computer.

Read those words again: as long as it's kept on the computer.

Every time the frog falls off, or I temporarily lose the frog, I have problems. When I had catastrophic issues with my Dell XPS, while moving things around I discovered the frog on the floor behind my desk. I replaced it on the computer after the XPS was fixed, and I haven't had a problem since.

Well, about two weeks ago, I discovered my monitor was on its last legs, so I ordered a new one. And then, a couple days ago, my sound card died.

And you guessed it: while I was under my desk fishing out cables and unplugging stuff in preparation for doing brain surgery on my computer, I found the frog on the floor.

So he's back, sitting on my new 22" LCD high def monitor (well, why not upgrade as long as I have to replace?) and enjoying the sound of my new sound card (thankfully it was the card and not my Bose speaker system, which is a lot more expensive.

My next purchase? Sticky Velcro. That little bugger's going NOWHERE.