Thursday, April 1, 2010

Failure Alert!

I kick off week four of TYSIC by doing absolutely nothing. From looking at my previous posts I have noticed that my pattern seems to be one week of progress and then another of falling flat on my face. I also realized this week how badly I tend to react when things go badly.

Yesterday, I went to my school's dining hall and brought my laptop (maybe if I would have actually tried this week I would have been social and gone with a friend, but I didn't) with me so I would have something to do. I open it up and it just froze. I did try to use my newly found optimism by thinking "hey, that's okay lot's of computers freeze." I turned it off and when I turned it back off nothing happened. Well, it seems that was all I needed to turn most of the optimism I had found into the pessimism I've always known so well. I pressed down the power button and turned it off again. I waited a couple minutes and decided "okay, let's not get carried away, it'll be okay." I turned it on and the computer got stuck again. All the screen showed was "Toshiba - Leading Innovation." I started doing everything at that point. From unplugging it to removing the battery to having it cool off and then try again, but nothing.

That's when I called my dad to tell him how incredibly crappy the computer was. I went off on how Toshiba was a bullshit company run by a bunch of idiots. Yes, I lost it. I know. And he just told me "Well maybe you can take the battery off for a while, maybe that will work. Anyways I need to get back to work. I'll call you later." So what did I do I called my mom and basically told her the same exact thing. Only it took me longer because I couldn't find the exact words I wanted to use in Spanish.

After I got done talking to her, it still wouldn't work. It had been almost an hour. And all optimism had gone out the window. I did even smack the keyboard a bit. But after I did hit it, magically my laptop came back to life. So now that I know I have a masochistic laptop, I guess I'll know what to do if this were ever to happen again.

So if anything, this week was a test of my optimism and I failed. Here's hoping I'll do better next week.

3 comments:

  1. Glad your laptop came back to life in the end. Make sure you're backed up, just in case it decides to act up again! (that's not being pessimistic, that's just being optimistic about the ability to prevent bad things being worse than they need to be!...or summink)

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  2. My Toshiba has done that several times now, has always worked again after a few hours (or many hours). It's extremely frustrating and I've no idea what the cause is but I suppose in some weird way it's actually good that it's happened on more than one computer, implies it might not be that computer specifically (this optimism thing is hard). Hope for your sake it doesn't do it again but try and remember mine's done it several times and survived if it ever does it again.

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  3. Erin: Yes, I must remember to do that more often. I had a big scare last month and backed up pretty much everything. However, I'd forgotten to do it lately and had papers that weren't saved anywhere else. I guess I should write it down.

    Emily: I have no idea what caused it either. I ran a virus scan afterward and nothing was found. Yeah, I guess so. It does reinforce my angry theory that Toshiba is a bull shit company. And yes optimism is difficult. If I'm not pessimistic I'm usually apathetic, trying to see life positively has me constantly muttering reassurances to myself.

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