Amazing isn’t it? Just when you need the computer to work, the printer to communicate with the computer and all that incredibly clever modern technology to just get on with the job, that’s when they have a breakdown.
This coming Sunday is a big day for me and for a group of my writing friends. We will meet at my house at 7.30am, ready to start writing a book for 10 – 14 year olds when we are given the parameters at 8am, via the computer of course. ‘Write a Book in a Day’ raises funds for The Kids Cancer Project; the money goes to research into childhood cancer and the books (written by lots of different groups like us) are given to children in hospitals all around Australia. Each writing group is given a different set of characters, a setting and an issue, plus five random words. By 8pm on Sunday our book, complete with illustrations, must be emailed to the organisers and the hard copy has to be posted on Monday.
I’m telling you this so that you will understand why I panicked last Friday evening when my laptop did a meltdown. I couldn’t actually read the message because the screen went dark blue, then black in seconds, but it was something like ‘There is no link.’
Link to what, I didn’t know, but when the screen died, my heart flipped and I waited for some sort of ‘fixit’ suggestion. Nothing came. I closed it (the physical piece of equipment) and went to pour myself a glass of wine. A certain degree of swearing accompanied the wine pouring as I wondered how I could resolve the problem quickly – given that it was Friday evening and help would not be available before Monday—well Tuesday—because my wonderful group of young IT experts are always booked out at least a day ahead.
On Saturday morning, still half asleep, I clicked on the appropriate buttons and all appeared as normal.
‘See, it will be fine,’ said my helpful partner. ‘Just a little glitch.’
We were supposed to head off to the Scarborough abode by 11am, but, not trusting the computer to survive, I spent the morning doing a full backup of the hard drive, then downloading all my documents onto my USB flash drive so that they could be transferred to my other, barely used, laptop (which was now being charged and coaxed out of retirement.)
‘Yeah,’ I congratulated myself when all the important information was saved. ‘I’ll just try printing out a few pages to make sure it is actually saved.’
‘Connection can’t be made,’ or words to that effect, came up on the screen of the dying laptop.
I tried ignoring that, as it had threatened death before and not actually done so. No. The printer would not communicate with the laptop. To check that in fact the laptop was the problem, I tried to print from the secondary laptop with the same result. Neither WIFI nor cable connection would work.
Now I had one almost dead laptop, one seemingly okay laptop, but no printer connection to either of them.
‘How can we print our book on Sunday, or indeed print anything before then, with a non-communicating printer?’ I asked myself, but not so politely. A few swear words got thrown in there.
At 1pm, with two laptops and the usual clobber, we headed for Scarborough. A cheap and flimsy printer sits on the desk there. If necessary, it might be okay as a replacement, I thought, although it needs manual reloading of every page to print on both sides – not really a satisfactory means of producing a book in twelve hours.
As writing of any sort seemed a remote possibility, I spent a pleasant few hours in the garden instead and on Sunday I took some retail therapy at Bunnings – always room for more pots and plants.
On Monday, back here in the hills, I rang my IT chaps and booked them for Tuesday. Just before the young man was due to arrive I thought I’d give the laptop one more chance to connect with the printer. Same old, sick laptop which was still regularly reporting that ‘the task cannot be completed’ or words to that effect. Only, this time the printer happily beeped and reported that it was ready for action. As Mr IT rang the bell, out spewed a beautifully printed page.
Don’t you love it when that sort of thing happens?
Fortunately these fellows are used to my weird problems. ‘I’ve never come across that before,’ is a regular comment when they are confronted with the gremlins at my house.
First he tackled the ‘dying laptop.’ Of course it carried on as if there had never been a problem, but deep in its bowels the date of a previous breakdown about two weeks earlier, revealed the cause of the problem—the hard drive. A major part had failed and despite Mr IT’s best efforts, it’s going to totally melt down any day soon.
Next job, the printer. Yes, somehow it had got itself out of sync, hence not receiving directions from either of the laptops. Fairly easy to fix once the root of the problem was found.
Roughly an hour later, I had a working system. A trip to Officeworks was on the agenda for the afternoon as a good supply of printer inks would be needed for ‘The Book.’ At the same time I decided to buy two large flash drives – one for photos and one for documents, to replace the various smaller ones I previously used.
While the dying laptop still lived, I spent much of the afternoon saving everything onto those new flash drives. All I had to do then was wipe the documents off the secondary laptop, slip the loaded disk into a USB port and transfer all my precious writings, business and general documents to what was now my main computer. Doing the same thing with photos took much longer.
By Wednesday I breathed a sigh of relief, believing that I could now get back to normal and knowing (or at least thinking) that with computer problems over, all would be well for Sunday.
I do think Sunday should be fine but, despite the fact that I have written down the passwords for everything except my bank account (which I can and do remember) I couldn’t get into any of my programs like Facebook, Skype, my website, etc. On the old (dying) laptop the passwords are saved, so I would just tick the box (or sometimes not even do that) and the programs opened.
To regain my Skype account, which I use to connect with family overseas, I spent two hours answering ridiculous questions, including about stuff I did four years ago (and which of course I don’t remember.) I was then informed that after 24 hours they will let me know if it’s really me; some time later they should allow me access to my account, for which they take money from my credit card every month.
Getting into my website was relatively easy because the password is so complicated I had to write it down, hence you are able to read this piece. For the others, one would think I was trying to steal thousands from my bank account.
Is it just me, or is the world getting totally paranoid about the possibility of someone stealing my password for every insignificant site on the internet? What about ‘Get Stuffed 2?’ or ‘Piss Off 1 and all!’ I could remember those and they should pass the requirements for just about every unimportant password. If I can just get the relevant sites to let me in, to change the passwords on my now main laptop.
I hope many of you will respond to this. Can’t wait.