Rice again?

When Jacob and I got married, we received a rice cooker as one of our gifts. I thought this was a peculiar contraption, I mean, didn't we all already have rice cookers in our kitchen? Weren't they just called saucepans? My mom never had a rice cooker, so I just thought it was weird that they would make an entire appliance dedicated to only cooking rice. Well, now that I have used that rice cooker for over 7 years to make tons of rice, and now that as of last week my rice cooker bit the dust and I have been forced to revert to the saucepan method, I can honestly say, "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD AND HOLY, GIVE ME BACK MY RICE COOKER!!!" I have unsuccessfully attempted to make rice twice without it and both times have produced a very crunchy, disgusting mass of starch. Luckily one of those times it was for the missionaries (for which I apologized profusely, I don't even want to know if they ate it). So what is the deal with rice, anyway? I mean, in the rice cooker it is equal parts water and rice and press the button. I thought that was the same way in the saucepan, but apparently not. I don't even have the bag to instruct me, as all my rice is from the storehouse and has been dumped into a tupperware container in my pantry. The moral of the story: one trick pony appliances are amazing! I am currently working on acquiring the mini frying pan that lets you fry one egg at a time (how did they acquire this technology so soon???) and the As Seen on TV Mushroom Xpress. Yeah, Google it and tell me you don't want one too, okay?