My Laptop is Mocking Me

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laptop-anger

Hi, all.  Lauren here.  Yesterday I had one of those WHY WON’T YOU JUST WORK moments with my laptop.  For those of you know me, I am extremely attached to my laptop and phone.  My job requires me to sit at my laptop all day long.

I was scheduled for a meeting and call with a client and coworker at 2pm.  I noticed around 1:50pm that my computer was getting pretty slow, so I restarted it so it would be ALL SHINY AND NEW AND FAST for my meeting in a few minutes.

And do you know what I did?  It imploded.  It laughed and me and said, “Oh, you need to do something online in a few minutes? Here let me completely reboot and reinstall your operating system.  It should only take 24 minutes.” (WHICH WAS A LIE, IT TOOK 52!)

I was furious. I was embarrassed.  I was confused – why have you forsaken me?

Technology.  Awesome when it works.  Slamming productivity to a whiplash-inducing halt when it doesn’t.

I was so annoyed / irate that I was sweating and turning red (the caffeinated tea I had with lunch did not help).

I tried to take deep calming breaths and remember that I had no control over the situation and could do nothing but wait.  And Skype my coworker from my phone to help answer her questions while she met with our client on her own.

I HATE FEELING / APPEARING INCOMPETENT.  This laptop is on thin ice.  I am ready to go Office-Space on it.

Soon.

soon-cat-walk

One thought on “My Laptop is Mocking Me”

  1. in my opinion, a computer that controls when it updates (or even requires updates) without your personal desire for it to is barely even your computer. this is one of the reasons i stopped using windows– tired of the way it tries to force updates, even turning them on again after youve turned them off (thats historical, not sure you can turn them off anymore.)

    theres really no such thing as a platform that “just works.” it might if you dont want to do anything special, or you dont care when it sits for an hour and runs updates, and you dont care when an update goes wrong.

    the only way to have your own, reliable computer is to learn more about how they work. windows tries to do everything for you– is it really smarter than you? no, and it doesnt care what you want much either.

    probably you are thinking “look, this is my only option right now.” yeah, it probably is right now. someday, maybe you will get tired of this. if you ever do– there are other options. they all require learning, though.

    if my software isnt working, i will probably sit and try to figure out whats wrong and fix it. if i dont have time, i just take out a usb, start from there and have a “fresh install” of my most-needed applications. any others i need, i just install from the network. updates run when i say– i can often cancel them mid-download if i have to. (cancelling mid-install is more risky. i can however, keep doing partial updates instead of full, so long as i let each part complete.)

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