psychological, but not poker related

In the earlier days of the Internet, I had a slight paranoia about leaving a computer "attached" to the Internet overnight.


One night, I was falling asleep, when I remembered the computer was still "linked up" in another room.


So, I figured I'd pick up the phone, and just punch keys and babble into the middle of the protocol, until the thing gave up and disconnected.


Problem was, each time I hit a button, I could hear the poor thing struggling to re-establish a handshake with the server!


It pained me so much, I couldn't bring myself to force a disconnection, and instead went and shut the thing off normally, with a friendly pat.


And, so my question is, is there any hope for a race of men who feel pain and empathy for a machine iterating through a serial asynchronous error-checking algorithm?


Or is it just me?


eLROY