Thursday, July 16, 2009

My Laptop

My work computer is a relatively new laptop. Two weeks ago, I found the blue screen of death, shut my computer down and it then refused to boot back up.

Thankfully, I was headed to DC the next week and the folks in IT worked their magic and now my computer works. Except when it doesn't.

It turns out that they fixed my hard drive but had been testing random batteries and left me with one that has no life. Literally. If I unplug my power cord, I have 5 minutes of life before everything shuts down. Before, I had 2+ hours. Needless to say, this makes access to outlets imperative at a coffeeshop.

We're having cable and internet installed in our new place tomorrow. Until now, we've been borrowing wireless access from our neighbor, Kevin. We've never met Kevin, and truth be told, we don't know if Kevin is his name, his dog's name, or the name of their favorite band. We're not picky though and as long as Kevin allows his network to be shared, we're happy. Until we're not.

Last night and today, Kevin's network is visible but not accessible. I'm not sure what we did to offend him, nor do I know how to find him were I want to apologize (which I am not, just for the record). But it has made working from home more difficult than anticipated.

So this morning I went to a coffee shop to get some work done. I plugged in (again, access to an outlet is still an imperative) and got nothing. Well, that's not exactly true. I got a message that said there was nothing available to boot up. It had been working just fine several hours before and I couldn't believe that the IT magic was already losing it's shine.

I rebooted. Nothing. I rebooted again. Nothing. Not even the blue screen of death. Nothing. Just a message that said I was SOL.

So I unplugged my computer, put the cord in my backpack and started to put the laptop in it's padded compartment. Where it hit something at the bottom. The only think I ever keep in that section is the laptop, so I couldn't figure out how I had that drastically misplaced my phone charger or sun glasses. But you never know, so I reached my hand into the padded section and pulled out... the hard drive.

Yes, the hard drive had fallen out of my laptop. Which meant that the message I'd received about having nothing to boot up, was actually correct. Who knew?!

And now things are working fine, in case you were wondering.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I WAS! And now that you don't have that blue screen of death anymore, it has taken root on the TV in my kitchen. (I looked underneath - no loose hard drive or any other parts.)