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September 2, 2004

Byte Me, A Cautionary Tale

Lani, writing from the very glamorous closet...

There are a couple of golden rules about computers. One, don't under any circumstances ever buy a Compaq.

Ever.

Two, the more you know about computers, the more that knowledge will come back to bite you in the ass.

My laptop went boom yesterday. Instead of raising my fists to the sky and cursing the heavens like a sailor with Tourette's Syndrome, I decided, "Hey, I've got some computer know-how. I'll just fix it myself." (italics added in hindsight for emphasis of my own stupidity)

Now, of course, those of you who, like myself, have just enough knowledge about computers to be seriously dangerous are probably cringing at home, yelling at the computer screen, your slow-motion "Nooooooooooo!!!!" glancing helplessly off the side of the monitor.

Or... you know... maybe not. Maybe I'm being overdramatic. I have that tendency. You know... author. Anyway, I started the reformat at two o'clock yesterday afternoon. At this moment, a full 24 hours later, I'm still working on it. I've had maybe four hours of sleep all told. Why? Because I'm obsessive. But that's a blog for another day.

So, last night after spending the afternoon reformatting (long process, this) I sat down with a glass of wine and went to it. I loaded some software, found a problem, couldn't figure it out, loaded drivers, loaded software, had another glass of wine, got loaded... nothing worked.

Fine. So I reformatted again, didn't bother loading the software, found I had the same problem, found a new driver, loaded the driver, it didn't fix the problem (I know - you're shocked.) So, instead of going to bed like a sane person and calling for a tech in the morning, I...

... say it with me now...

... reformatted again. (Just because it didn't work the first time doesn't mean it won't work now... I know enough about computers to know that they test the definition of insanity on a regular basis.) So hey, yay me - the problem is fixed, and I start loading my software, expecting a late but respectable Estimated Time of Slumber... but now there's a second problem, a worse problem, dealing directly with my wireless internet.

Gah.

Well, five hours, two tech support calls, and endless wailing and gnashing of teeth later, I give in to the throes of desperation and reformat.

Again.

And suddenly, as the sun rises behind me, everything's fine. Everything works.

For absolutely no reason at all. I did nothing different during the last reformat, save some vigilant prayer and the sacrifice of a small chicken. Okay. A Peeps. But still, I say Gah. Friggin' computers.

The moral of this cautionary tale is... send your computer to a tech and get reamed up the credit rating like everybody else. It's just not worth it.

Well, this is a short entry, but not very interesting, so at least I minimized the pain. But you know what is interesting? The forums. Why? Because it's all about you, and as you can see if you read them, you all are frickin' hilarious. So go kill some time, why don't you? I need some reading material to occupy me while I spend countless hours reinstalling software...

Hugs & Puppies,

Lani

Posted by Lani at 2:11 PM | Comments (1)

Comments

Posted by: Eileen at September 3, 2004 12:07 PM