I found that there’s a problem with computer technology these days or at least with the type that adorns the various horizontal services of a computer desk.

It’s all made of plastic.

Okay, so a lot of home type computer equipment has always been made of plastic but there used to be a bit of glass thrown in for good measure especially in the case of monitors. Easily cleaned, highly resistant to scratches.

Now all the monitors except for a very few (now called “displays” for some reason, not monitors) are made of plastic, including the screen. So enter the LCD display

Now hold that thought…

Used to be reading glasses were made out of…well…glass. Easily cleaned, highly resistant to scratches. Now all the reading glasses have lenses made out of plastic.

Hold that thought as well. Now you have two  thoughts. And you thought you wouldn’t come away with anything.

Now take all your plastic and put it into an old house with wall to wall carpeting located 8 miles from the border of Canada where the winters are known to be 6 months long.

Now make it the dead of winter.

Note: Those that haven’t had the dubious honor of living in a place that had long hard winters such as Hawaii or Suriname probably wouldn’t have a clue as to what my point could possibly be here. That’s quite alright as right now I’d much rather be in one of those two nice warm places sipping a long cool drink and being as clueless as you are.

So now let’s bring in the bane of winter ( besides freezing temperatures, massive wind chills, driving snow, hazardous driving, endless shoveling and all that)—static electricity! That’s right, static electricity.

Winter in these parts just suck the moisture right out of the air and replace it with about 150,000 volts of static electricity (it keeps the dust down at least).

And to make everything complete, let’s add a cat. Better yet, let’s add four cats. Two of which who love to camp out on my computer desk next to my display and two more that insist on laying on my lap while I sit at my computer desk (occasionally they fight over the privilege in which case I usually end up with a pierced lap as well).

So guess how long it takes to have my display and glasses covered with cat hair.

I can’t keep these boneheads away from my desk no matter how hard I try. And did you ever try to remove cat hair that was stuck to plastic with around 50,000 volts or so of static electricity surrounding it? Do you know how scratch prone LCD displays are? Reading glasses aren’t that much better.

I spend 20% of my time writing a post and 80% of the time attempting to remove cat hair from pieces of plastic that sit either on my face or in front of it. If I don’t keep a constant vigilance then my glasses and display become so inundated with fur that I can’t make anything out.

Things got so bad that I went out and bought a large economy size of canned air that was suppose to be anti-static figuring I could blow the stuff off but to no avail. The cat hair flew off alright but immediately reversed it’s direction and ended up right back where it started from. Sort of like a yo-yo effect.

It wasn’t a total loss though. I found it was much more effective if I just blew the cat off my desk instead.

I wonder if they make such a thing as a combination LCD display, reading glasses and humidifier?