Murphy's Law is alive and well and apparently living in my laptop. For the past several months, I've noticed that the performance of my lovely HP Pavilion laptop (less than two years old, mind you) has been degrading steadily. Programs are running more slowly. Response times when I click on something are slower. And every so often, the laptop will just "black out" on me (i.e. crash or shut itself down with no warning).
Now, lest you think I am a neglectful employer, I should explain that I actually take very good care of my one and only "employee". I rarely require this laptop to travel farther than the living room, even though it is designed for portability. I have never dropped it or spilled anything on it. I dust it regularly and use it on a stable surface to keep the fans well-ventilated.
Sure, I'm demanding... often requiring my laptop to work long hours and to multitask between complex software programs and tasks. But I never raise my voice to it and never curse at it, no matter what. I try to treat it with the utmost respect; is it too much to ask that I be treated with the same courtesy in return? Like, at the very least, to be given a warning before my laptop decides to take a coffee break?
I've even started to wonder if my laptop is French, given its recent inclination to go en grève at the most inconvenient moments. Perhaps my laptop has been having sympathy pains with the recent CPE protests. But if that is the case, then why oh why did it pick TODAY to crash not once but SIX times?
The first time it blacked out today was about 45 minutes after I turned it on, and I wasn't even using it. It was just sitting there, minding its own business while I ate my breakfast, and all of a sudden it just shut down. I've been concerned that these black-outs have actually been the result of either a virus that my McAfee software has not detected, or that the laptop has been overheating (I seem to recall reading in the user manual that this can happen as a protective measure rather than the entire laptop melting down). But I don't know why it would overheat after being on for less than an hour and without me forcing it to run any software.
So, I let it rest a while, made a phone call, and then after it felt cooler I turned it back on. Within 30 minutes... it "fainted" again. Uh-oh. I started to get very nervous. Again I repeated the cycle of letting it rest for about 15 minutes and then turning it on again, and this time I decided to run Viruscan. But before Viruscan was even halfway complete, it shut down again.
You know those Geek Squad commercials where the woman's computer crashes and she screams out loud? That's what I felt like. And that's who I called. When I bought the laptop at BestBuy I bought a 3-year performance agreement that would cover walk-in service with the Geek Squad, but they usually have a two-week wait for getting anything fixed that way. I can't afford to be without my computer that long, so I decided to spring for a Geek House Call. They seem to feel it probably is a virus even though McAfee didn't detect one. I'm wondering if there is something causing the thing to overheat too quickly (I even went out to Staples and bought it its own personal "fan" cooling system and so far that seems to be helping... no crashes in the past 90 minutes).
Unfortunately the earliest they can get here is Monday morning. In a panic, not knowing what Murphy's Law will do to me next -- Flood? Fire? Pestilence? -- and knowing I have to prepare and file my taxes by Monday and I need a computer to do it, I have spent the rest of the day (when I should have been sorting tax receipts) setting up all of my business software on my mother's computer and backing up all my data off my laptop so I can port it over to mom's computer. In fact that's where I'm writing this post.
Until then, I will have to make do. If I don't post much over the next several days, you'll know why. On the bright side, I'm told the Geeks really do drive those cool little VW Beetles and carry badges like federal agents. This should be interesting to see one of those cars show up in my driveway on Monday morning, "as seen on TV"!
.........................................................................................
And in case I forget to say it later, Happy Passover and Happy Easter to all of you who are celebrating the one of the holidays this week. I will be enjoying Easter dinner with my family at my sister's new house... they are now the official site for all family get-togethers and this will be the first holiday we'll be celebrating together in their new home.
