The Transcript - A Technological Tale
Once upon a time in a faraway land there lived a grad student named Meredith, who was beautiful and clever and kind and virtuous and loved by everybody, just like the female protagonist always is in this kind of story. Now Meredith had always dreamed of getting a summer internship at the State Department, or at least the thought had crossed her mind once or twice. One day she went to a presentation by her school's career services office, where she found out that the application for State Department internships was due in only two weeks! It seemed like she would miss her chance, and never see the inside of the mighty State Department castle. She wept for a while in a theatrical yet still becoming way, while anthropomorphic fuzzy woodland creatures brought her tissues. But just when she was about to give up hope she thought of calling on the Technology Fairy. Meredith rubbed a lamp and clicked her heels together and said the magic words and behold! the Technology Fairy appeared. She was clad in a gown of the purest glistening silicone, with hair of copper wine and eyes that shone like frickin' lasers. Meredith explained her problem and begged for the fairy's help. The Technology Fairy took pity on the girl, rolled up her sleeves, whipped out her Wand of Wirelessness and went straight to work.
With the help of the fairy's powers Meredith submitted her application online, downloaded her Student Aid Report and ordered a transcript from her previous university. It was here that the encountered her first challenge: Bureaucratic Incompetance. Under the spell of the Bureaucracy Demon her university refused to fax her the document, only allowing information out through the Snail Mail channel, a slow and inefficient route where many brave documents were often lost. The fairy's power stymied by this awesome evil, Meredith turned to any girl's last best hope: her mother, who collected the transcript safely, scanned it and emailed it in PDF format. Everything seemed to be going splendidly. All Meredith had to do now was print out her transcript and fax it off to the State Department and her application would be complete. Pleased with the prospect of having the task completed she loaded her transcript PDF onto a flash drive and skipped merrily off to the school computer lab, humming a happy tune and accompanied by a chorus of anthropomorphic fuzzy woodland creatures singing backup.
However, when she reached the computer lab Meredith was filled with a sense of foreboding. Unknown to her, this was the lair of the Technology Fairy's twin evil archenemies, Archaic Hardware and Obsolete Software. The Technology Fairy could do nothing here; Meredith was on her own. She plugged in her flash drive - the computer would not recognize it. This could have been the end, but Meredith exercised that cleverness we mentioned earlier, pulled out her Laptop of Power and sent the files to herself as an email attachment. It looked like she had won, but Hardware and Software had a few more tricks up their sleeves. Meredith tried again and again to print her transcript and each time the twins of technological terror countered with a new and devastating weapon: write error, out of memory, long strings of meaningless numbers. At last Meredith limped out of the computer lab, alive but defeated.
The sad violins were playing as she gazed at the smoking ruins of her PDF file. It seemed like it was time for some more dramatic weeping, but suddenly she thought of another way, one last chance to print the transcript and save the day. The girl hurried home to her charmingly dilapidated but somehow spotlessly clean garret and pulled from its shelf her last hope - a brand-new never-used inkjet printer. It had come free with the Laptop of Power, but she had never needed it until now. Now, Faraway Land was a little quirky in that it ran its magical power on a different current than they did at Home, which our heroine knew full well. Before she left Home for Faraway Land she had taken the power cord of her printer to the Wizards of Fry's, to see if they could help with the problem. The Wizards gave her a magic transformer that they assured her would absolutely positively without question enable her printer to work with the current of Faraway land. So, Meredith pulled out the transformer, hooked everything up, said a little prayer to the magical gods that the Wizards knew what they were talikng about and plugged it in. The anthropomorphic fuzzy woodland creatures held their breaths. The light came on! It made printer-type noises! And then there was a hissing sound and a wisp of smoke arose from her brand-new never-used circuit-fried inkjet printer, taking her last hope of printing her transcript with it.
Will Meredith get her transcript faxed in time? Where the hell is Prince Charming all this time? What will those cute woodland creatures do next? Stay tuned.
With the help of the fairy's powers Meredith submitted her application online, downloaded her Student Aid Report and ordered a transcript from her previous university. It was here that the encountered her first challenge: Bureaucratic Incompetance. Under the spell of the Bureaucracy Demon her university refused to fax her the document, only allowing information out through the Snail Mail channel, a slow and inefficient route where many brave documents were often lost. The fairy's power stymied by this awesome evil, Meredith turned to any girl's last best hope: her mother, who collected the transcript safely, scanned it and emailed it in PDF format. Everything seemed to be going splendidly. All Meredith had to do now was print out her transcript and fax it off to the State Department and her application would be complete. Pleased with the prospect of having the task completed she loaded her transcript PDF onto a flash drive and skipped merrily off to the school computer lab, humming a happy tune and accompanied by a chorus of anthropomorphic fuzzy woodland creatures singing backup.
However, when she reached the computer lab Meredith was filled with a sense of foreboding. Unknown to her, this was the lair of the Technology Fairy's twin evil archenemies, Archaic Hardware and Obsolete Software. The Technology Fairy could do nothing here; Meredith was on her own. She plugged in her flash drive - the computer would not recognize it. This could have been the end, but Meredith exercised that cleverness we mentioned earlier, pulled out her Laptop of Power and sent the files to herself as an email attachment. It looked like she had won, but Hardware and Software had a few more tricks up their sleeves. Meredith tried again and again to print her transcript and each time the twins of technological terror countered with a new and devastating weapon: write error, out of memory, long strings of meaningless numbers. At last Meredith limped out of the computer lab, alive but defeated.
The sad violins were playing as she gazed at the smoking ruins of her PDF file. It seemed like it was time for some more dramatic weeping, but suddenly she thought of another way, one last chance to print the transcript and save the day. The girl hurried home to her charmingly dilapidated but somehow spotlessly clean garret and pulled from its shelf her last hope - a brand-new never-used inkjet printer. It had come free with the Laptop of Power, but she had never needed it until now. Now, Faraway Land was a little quirky in that it ran its magical power on a different current than they did at Home, which our heroine knew full well. Before she left Home for Faraway Land she had taken the power cord of her printer to the Wizards of Fry's, to see if they could help with the problem. The Wizards gave her a magic transformer that they assured her would absolutely positively without question enable her printer to work with the current of Faraway land. So, Meredith pulled out the transformer, hooked everything up, said a little prayer to the magical gods that the Wizards knew what they were talikng about and plugged it in. The anthropomorphic fuzzy woodland creatures held their breaths. The light came on! It made printer-type noises! And then there was a hissing sound and a wisp of smoke arose from her brand-new never-used circuit-fried inkjet printer, taking her last hope of printing her transcript with it.
Will Meredith get her transcript faxed in time? Where the hell is Prince Charming all this time? What will those cute woodland creatures do next? Stay tuned.