The Entrepreneur’s Comprehensive Guide to Throwing His/Her Computer Against A Wall
As an entrepreneur, whether you’re a one-man show or an established bigwig, you’re bound to run into considerable amounts of stress. The responsibilities and pressures of developing a business are endless – everything from making phone calls, to lunch meetings, to working against deadlines can take a toll on your emotional well-being. And sometimes, when the toll becomes great enough, you reach a boiling point and want to do something drastic – like throw your computer against a wall.
Personally, I probably think about throwing my computer against a wall three to four times a month, but due to reasons of finance and general practicality, I have never given into the urge. Not yet, anyway. However, I imagine many of you are in the same boat, struggling with the same urge, and perhaps closer to giving in than me. So, rather than write a post about stress management - there exist about a googabillion such articles across the blogosphere – I want to outline what you should do when your stress prevails and you prepare to throw your computer against a wall.
- Concentrate on the grip. Your mind is probably racing with all sorts of anger and non-rational emotion, but if you’re going to throw your computer against the wall, make sure it’s a solid throw. I mean, this might not be a shining moment in your professional career, but nonetheless, it will certainly be a moment to remember. So make sure you wipe off your clammy palms before you pick up the computer, and grip the computer’s base firmly with both hands. You must maintain this firm grip as you rotate the computer towards your throwing side and propel the computer across your body towards the wall.
- Clear the area. This one goes without saying: if you’re going to chuck a heavy metal object through the air, make sure no co-workers are standing in the way. Not only will they hinder the computer’s spectacular smash/explosion, but there’s also a pretty decent chance they could get hurt. At the very least, have the courtesy to yell “Four!”
- Confirm the right people are watching. Throwing your computer against a wall is an act of epic proportions, something people often threaten to do, but in reality, never come close. Aside from immediate (and fleeting) moments of stress-relief, the single greatest benefit from throwing your computer against a wall will be the bravado you demonstrate to your co-workers. They may think you are a mildly crazed hot-head, but I’ll be damned if they’re not inspired by your decisiveness. Who knows? Maybe everybody will join in and throw their computers at the closest wall, as well. We all have stress, but we don’t all have leaders.
- Milk the spectacle for all its worth. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it, but there’s this new, fun website that’s really taking off called youtube. Yeah, you know the one. Everyday over 100 million videos are watched on the site, the majority of which are created by no-name folks like you and me. So, if you’re going to throw your computer against a wall, why not cash in on some celebrity. People love watching others behave like jackasses, and by throwing your computer against a wall, yes, you immediately qualify as a jackass. Simply ask a co-worker to film you on his iphone, upload the video to youtube, and with a little luck (not to mention some effective word of mouth marketing), you could be a pop sensation before morning. Or conversely, maybe only a few people will watch the video, but your friends will thank you for sharing your insanity, and years down the line, when you’ve gained some perspective on your crippling stress issues, you’ll enjoy a hearty laugh.
All right, my friends. Those are the essential elements of throwing your computer against a wall. These elements, as I suspect some of you are wondering, apply to both laptop and desktop computers. Once again, I am not advocating such wild and crazy behavior, but if you must throw your computer against a wall, I implore you: please make the most of it.
March 6th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I once tossed my packard-bell against the wall when I was 17-18. All because a ram module wouldn’t seat correctly. End result, packard-bell was dead
The next day I went out and took out a loan from circuit city and bought my first laptop…
March 6th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Peter- That is a tragic, tragic story - and you are inspiration to us all!
March 10th, 2008 at 5:38 am
There was a time when I threw 7 Acer 166MHz desktops off a roof. It should be added that they were (honestly) EOL, and were not tasked to anything else.
I did the mass x velocity calculation, and figured I couldn’t generate enough kinetic energy to inflict spectacular damage by hurling them across a room (any room) against a wall.
Yeah, I’d likely break ‘em, but that wasn’t exactly the issue. My goal was to subject these horrible pieces of machinery to the maximum amount of destructive force available.
Ergo, the roof.
One glorious summer evening when coworkers and other personnel had departed, your intrepid writer dragged all seven workstations up to the roof level (11 floors above a parking lot) after weighing one as a sample. While recovering my breath I did a back of the envelope calculation just to see if physics supported my hypothesis that any of these hideous pieces of junk would basically explode upon impact with terra firma some 150 odd feet below (at an average of 14 feet per story in that development).
The back of the envelope calculation went something like this:
An object which is falling through the atmosphere is subjected to two external forces. One force is the gravitational force, expressed as the weight of the object. The other force is the air resistance, or drag of the object. The motion of any object can be described by Newton’s second law of motion, force F equals mass m times acceleration a:
F = m * a
which can be solved for the acceleration of the object in terms of the net external force and the mass of the object:
a = F / m
Weight and drag are forces which are vector quantities. The net external force F is then equal to the difference of the weight W and the drag D
F = W - D
The acceleration of a falling object then becomes:
a = (W - D) / m
The magnitude of the drag is given by the drag equation. Drag D depends on a drag coefficient Cd, the atmospheric density r, the square of the air velocity V, and some reference area A of the object.
D = Cd * r * V ^2 * A / 2
Then I realized with awful certainty that I was fucked. Insufficient means for declaring several of the variables existed, thus I couldn’t approach this from a rigidly scientific perspective.
Deprived of the mathematical basis for predicting destruction, I went to the fall back position of human instinct and predictive resonance.
“If I throw a 15lb piece of equipment off a roof approximately 150 ft up, will it fragment upon impact with the ground”
[pause for thought of indeterminate length lubricated by consumption of several large cans of beer]
“Yes”
Whereupon I hurled the first offender in an arc like trajectory (so that it would tend to accelerate before beginning its final fall to earth).
Approximately 11 seconds later, impact occurred, and gentle readers, I shit you not - the workstation utterly disintegrated. The case burst open and the contents were forcibly ejected in an impact field of almost 10 feet in circumference.
Over the course of this magnificent summer evening I consumed approximately a case of beer, and when the intellectual muse seemed to coincide with;
a) the natural beauty of the sunset
b) the end of a few (more) cans of adult beverage
I leisurely lobbed another workstation over the parapet and raced to the “impact observation platform”.
By the end of the evening, I felt considerably better. A certain zen-like state of mind seemed to exist. Now this may have been because I had inhaled almost 12 liters of extremely potent brewski’s, or all invasive stress elements had been ritualistically purged by destruction of formerly useful workstations. So Brian, you were correct in surmising that considerable frustration can be expelled by the judicious wrecking of computing equipment.
I have to add one tiny caveat however; PC’s - yes OK, but monitors…OH HELL YES!!
March 10th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I had a moment like that back in college: after receiving a D on a programming project I just had spent the past 54 hours awake working on I immediately eyed my large and heavy 19 inch CRT monitor as the prime source of my failure in life. I had this insane vision of myself throwing it through the large dorm window to crash down upon the mall below. The resulting expulsion from the dorms would’ve made my failure complete.
So instead I kicked my foot throw a running box fan that my roommate used to simulate a running semi-truck while I was sleeping. About 5 good kicks to the center of the fan alleviated most of my anger and I went back to drinking mountain dew and playing counterstrike. Several minutes later I noticed a funny smell. I had neglected to unplug the corpse of the fan after my outburst and it had started on fire in the middle of the room…
…So I threw it down the stairwell. Needless to say my roommate was dismayed when I told him that his fan spontaneously started on fire - must’ve been because he never turned it off. Fans aren’t meant to be on 24/7.
-Chris