Laptop Update!

It works!

It's a miracle!

They took it apart, left it to dry over the weekend, cleaned it with magic elf elixir, left it to dry some more, put it back together, tried to boot it up and were - they told me themselves - quite frankly shocked when it did!

After cloning my hard-drive they ran it through some memory tests and stress tests which it passed!

There is evidence of corrosion and yes I've probably shortened its life* but it's working just fine at the moment.

I don't know what I did to deserve this reprieve but I do know I am going to be a hell of a lot more careful about where I put things :-/

So in summary: Yay!



*I'm sorry, baby, I'm soooo sorry! :-(

Time For The Slow Clap

Because I'm a very special kind of genius, at approximately 10 am on Thursday morning I knocked a full cup of coffee with my hand and sloshed a good quarter of it onto my laptop keyboard.

I'll pause to allow you time to make the appropriate series of faces (i.e. oh no! --> you idiot... --> you poor, dumb idiot...).

All done?

Well I hope that didn't wear out your face muscles because I'm not done.

As I was flailing around trying to right the coffee mug and swearing inventively at myself... I knocked over a glass of water.

Right onto my laptop keyboard.

Yep.

Feel free to proceed directly to 'you idiot' and stay there this time.

On the upside, it washed the coffee out of my laptop.

On the downside... laptop full of water.

At this point my brain finally joined the party.

I switched my laptop (which was still miraculously on at this point) off, pulled the battery and stood it on its end to let the water run out.

Knowing there was nothing else I could do, I just had to sit there cursing my own name until the end of the day at which point I took it to the computer shop and - shamefaced and penitent - handed it over to see what can be done.

Seeing as Step 1 is 'take it apart, clean it and then leave it to dry for a few days before even thinking about putting it back together and seeing if it will reboot' I have some suspense and plenty of time to feel like an idiot ahead.

If I've wrecked it I'll only be truly mad at myself if I also lose all my data.

If it's still working by some miracle I will have shortened its lifespan and learned a fairly valuable life lesson the hard way.

But the most important thing to remember here is that I'm an idiot :-P

Fiiiiiiiiiiiinally!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I have my laptop back again!

It had been with my friendly neighbourhood IT guys for an entire week after it went completely mental.

Around the 17th of May my antivirus software calmly announced that it hadn't received its scheduled update.

'Bloody thing,' I thought and clicked on the manual 'Update' button.

The update failed.

I tried again.

Fail.

I tried a bunch more times.

Fail fail fail.

I ran the antivirus software scan.

It found a couple of things.

I deleted them.

I tried to update again.

Fail.

OK, let's click the button that gives you more information on why the update is failing.

Oh good, now it's failing to open the Microsoft Help Website, that's not weird at all.

Let's see what happens when I try to validate my genuine copy of Windows.

Ah. It won't do that either.

That's not suspicious at all.

I asked a friend what else I could do.

She suggested a couple of websites that offer open source antivirus tools.

I tried to visit them.

I couldn't.

Yep.

Perfect.

Oh and look at that, my computer has failed a scheduled validation of my genuine windows software and if I don't rectify this - which I can't - my antivirus software will lapse altogether.

That's. Just. Excellent.

It was at that point that I disconnected from the internet and handed it over to the tender ministrations of the IT clan.

The virus took some eradicating, then they tidied up the files and deleted any extra unnecessary faff, ran a few checks, found some corrupted segments of drive, saved all my files elsewhere, reformatted my computer, updated everything, put my files back onto it and delivered it back into my loving arms.

I've survived alright without it seeing as I had my swish new phone to check in on emails and social media and even websites if I didn't mind them being tiny but my laptop has all my music, all my photos, all my files...

I already had copies of everything on a terabyte drive for safety but it's not the same as having them on a laptop that you can just open and access anywhere rather than having to wait until you're at work and plug your drive into your work computer.

Welcome back, little laptop, I missed you.

The Bag Lady

I have a tendency to take things with me 'just in case'.

This often serves me well as 'just in case' turns up every once in a while and sometimes I or somebody I know benefits from the bandaids, pens, maps and miscellanea that I have on hand.

I've pared down the amount of 'just in case' items from a previous status of 'ridiculous' to their current status of 'not too bad but probably still a little too much' but there's one thing that seems to be slowing me down quite considerably.

My laptop.

Watching with thinly disguised jealousy as a coworker glanced at her watch, swung her bag onto her shoulder and disappeared into the distance in the blink of an eye I wondered why I couldn't be like that.

As I unplugged my power cord.

And disconnected from the internet.

And clicked on the Safely Remove Hardware icon.

And removed my internet USB.

And shut down my laptop.

And put it and all its paraphernalia into its shoulder bag.

And swung that bag onto my shoulder.

And my handbag.

And picked up the little cooler bag I'd brought my lunch in.

'Well, poop on this!' I thought! 'I can get by without my laptop at work!'

I mean, all it does is let me listen to whatever music or talking book I like, allow me to check Twitter/my email/any other websites banned by our work network, hold an array of items that I can transfer across and email to coworkers to enhance my points during arguments or offer distraction during the boring parts of the day...

I can do this...

So starting tomorrow I'm not taking my laptop with me to work.

For a fortnight.

I'd say a week but I already spent Monday wrapped in its loving embrace so that hardly counts* and seems a bit weak.

I'll just put a bunch of music onto a USB and take that instead.

I'm sure I'll be fine.

And even if I'm not this will probably be good for me.

I need to detach a little bit before I pull a full on Serial Experiments Lain or whatever the less technologically proficient version of that might be.

It should also save me about half an hour of farting around per day unpacking/packing up my laptop and I'm going to use that time to go for a walk or something.

If all goes smoothly and I don't crack like an addict who didn't realise just how hard cold turkey was going to be, I may very well make it a permanent arrangement. I expect Future Me and her back/shoulder would thank me for it.



*The fact that next Monday is a public holiday and technically doesn't count also factors into the equation.