You know how it is. Your significant other is away for a few weeks, so you think, whoo hoo, time to get all Spider-Pig. Drink beer, eat pizza, work late. You're off the leash. You stop taking care of things you need to take care of, and then life gets complicated. So this morning I overslept because my alarm clock is still sulking about the whole 'throwing' incident (I didn't really throw it. It was more of a big yawn that went wrong.) So I fell out of bed and I was half way out the door before I heard my Oyster Card shouting. I went back in and found it buried deep in the bowels of my laundry bag (and then it took five minutes to calm the poor thing down.)

I got to the end of my street and saw a bus across the other side of the road, but when I ran across the road of course the bloody flash went off. When I checked my Blackberry at the bus stop I had an e-mail Penalty Charge notice from Camden council for "illegal and dangerous misuse of a pedestrian crossing" which means the £50 fine had already been deducted from my PayPal account. Which meant it would have been cheaper to get a taxi to work.

On the bus my iPod was acting up and said that I wasn't adhering to my own cultural improvement programme, which I keyed in during a moment of folly in the pub a few weeks ago, so I couldn't listen to Coldplay and fall asleep, as is my wont (look, it's a guilty pleasure, alright? You're just too young to understand.) This meant I had to listen to a medley of Pitchfork's Best New Music selection for 45 brain numbing minutes, and I'm sorry, but I just haven't warmed up to Animal Collective, Black Lips, and Underground Kings.

When I got to work I was 15 minutes late and my swipe card gave me a knowing look and ignored my pleas for clemency, which meant that it was sending an instant message to human resources because it's the third time this week I've been late – which means no timekeeping bonus for me this quarter. And to top it all, when I booted up my PC, Windows was furious and refused to let me access my e-mail for ten minutes until I defragmented the hard drive, updated my security software and deleted 15 unused desktop icons.

Finally it let me on to the corporate networks after playing the opening bars of Beck’s Loser just to let me know exactly how it felt about me. Vista was a dog but I tell you, I'd rather go back to Vista than use Windows Partner. You didn't have to form a real emotional relationship with Vista, other than distant contempt, but with Windows Partner . . . I still remember the day I forgot its install day. It wouldn't let me boot up for a week.

I sloped off at lunch time and tried to make a few personal calls but my phone won't give me a break after the time I drunk-dialled Australia, so it kept crashing on me whenever I tried to make a video connection. I was reduced to making apologetic voice calls, so that everyone I spoke to assumed I was either skiving of work, hungover, or nursing a black eye.

When I finally got home my TV was furious because I'm two weeks late on my cable company bill and it's getting it in the ear from some online account software, so the only thing it would let me watch was a Norwegian-language discussion programme featuring two politicians in sweaters and a carafe of spring water. In the end I gave up and tried to have an early night, but my alarm went off on the hour every hour until I promised to buy it its own supply of brand-new Duracells.

I just couldn't sleep, so finally I got up and started negotiating with my Blu-HD Player. Things had broken down between us, a stupid argument about a new HDMI cable that got completely out of hand, but in the end I agreed to think about it and it let me watch a James Bond film, which settled my nerves a bit (although it's depressing to see Daniel Craig looking so old. Those black polo necks aren't fooling anyone.) Of course, if I was James Bond then all my gadgets would be in love with me, and do what I wanted, instead of giving me nothing but grief. But what are you going to do? That's just fantasy. Real life is about compromise, diplomacy, and tact. It'll be better when my partner gets home. I just don't have the emotional intelligence to be left to my own devices.

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Michael Parsons, now editor of CNET.co.uk, was once European correspondent for The Red Herring magazine, and spent five years working in Silicon Valley and worrying about technology. He can be reached at michael.parsons@cnet.co.uk

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