Blue Screen of Death!

I thought I lost my hard drive on my laptop. I was devastated because I hadn’t saved certain things, like the newest changes to my novel, I’m at 47,000 words. I was watching a movie and heard this horrible grating sound and then the computer shut down to save itself. And I got, for the first time, the blue screen of death. Ahhh. I called this place in the phone book Fast Teks and they sent a man over, a $90 an hour man. He came in with what he needed to fix a desktop not a laptop, so he couldn’t work at my house. Huge red flag I think. He says he can save my documents and it will take an hour. Great that’s what I want and I’ll but in a new hard drive myself. It only takes five minutes. Then he starts talking about reloading the operating systems, Office and everything else. I realize beyond Windows XP, I don’t have any of those disks. I agree with him that he will take it with him, recover my files, install a new hard drive if it needs it, 25% chance it won’t, and he will also reinstall all of the operating system stuff. We agree on $230 for the whole shebang minus a $25.00 new customer discount, and he leaves with my laptop.

He brings the computer back the next day, today, and has all of my stuff backed up on disks for me. Very good. Also my computer is working fine and all of my old stuff is in it, no hard drive, no operating system files needed. I pay him the $205 and ask him what was wrong, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know if it was a virus. Hmmm. Whatever the computer is working all of my crazy stuff is still on there, suck it up and move on with life. Good.

A couple of hours ago, I pop in Conversations with God, and begin to watch. Not even halfway into the movie, gggrrrrrrrrrr, blue screen of death. OMG, I am so mad and sad my poor computer. I am going to call him tomorrow and he had better make this right some how. The kicker is, for that money wasn’t I paying him to diagnose the problem? Really, I’m asking, was I? After speaking to my brother, who is too far away to help me physically but talks to me. He diagnoses the problem as the fan. Or the lack of the working fan. If this guy had the computer and worked on it for the 3 or 4 hours he said he did, it would have overheated and he would have figured out it was the fan, wouldn’t he have? Wasn’t it his responsibility to figure out what happened to the computer? After it had been cooled off, perhaps he started it and it just started – LIKE IT JUST DID FOR ME!!!!

It is so hard not to have a good team surrounding you. I need a computer person. A good one that I can trust. Like my mechanic, he is slow as molasses but when he fixes something it is fixed properly. I tried others over the years but paid to have the car fixed, and then had to pay him to fix it again. And when I say slow, I mean slow, as in I still don’t have my new car I bought almost a month ago which he is fixing the wheel bearing on. I know I said I wasn’t in a bind but… Although I know when I get in that car it will be save and fixed properly. After all he is the one who picked it out and handled the purchase for me too. So a good team member. I need a good computer person. I used to have one but he moved never gave me the new number, because you really don’t need a tech too often to require being in their Blackberry, file-o-fax, or rolodex.

So the laptop is on sabbatical. I am on my desktop, in my office chair, and it seems so formal. I love the lounginess of the laptop. No lounginess is not a word, but I’m an English teacher and I can make them up! No more typing at ya from the couch! My poor baby is blue and so am I, that must be why they make that error screen blue.

~One question while we are all here, when you check REMEMBER ME on websites where you have to enter your email and password to get in, why don't they? It is really chipping away at my self esteem, don't enough people forget about you in life, don't you sometimes just want to scream, "Here I Am Don't Forget Me?" And yet it taunts and teases with it's little question, REMEMBER ME, and you check the box off feeling good something will remember me. Then the devistation, it hasn't remembered you, they never remember you, you are just a bunch of numbers - please enter your email and your password, because we don't know and don't care who you are! Remember Me!