Monday, September 12, 2011

Computer Farts and Other Oddities


Today has been a lesson is patience. I woke up this a.m. with a single goal in mind, and my day spiraled out of control from that point on. It all started when I was enjoying my morning routine of coffee and blood. No, I'm not a vampire or into the red stuff, but I am diabetic, so I test every morning fasting.

But, instead of my test strip going into my cute little biohazard bin after I did my glucose test, it flipped into my coffee. No problem, I'll just dump it out. Except that was the last cup left in the pot, so I had to make more. While the happy little coffeemaker did it's thing, I decided to read my emails. I even managed to get through about 67 of them (23 of which were about my saggy boobs needing a genie bra—how did they know? lol) when a pop up alert flashed onto my screen, saying I needed to upgrade my browser.

Seems simple enough. I clicked yes and installed the update. Then I got a pop-up telling me my java script was too old. Fine. I'll update it too. When I came back with my coffee in hand (new cup sans blood strip) I saw another notification on the screen, telling me that my OS should also be updated. Man, is my computer feeling its age. Everything on it is out of date, I thought. So sure, it's free, why not update it. So I clicked OK.

Then it said, I must restart for all my changes to take effect. Sure, go for it. And boy did I! OhMiGawd. I knew I shouldn't have trusted those happy little prompt windows! They lied, because when my computer came back on and I tried to launch my browser, all hell broke loose. The little progress icon I coined, 'the spinning beach ball of death' popped onto my screen and stayed there for about thirty minutes. I would get up, do laundry, come back and check the screen, nope. So then I did dishes and mopped the floor. Surely by now the bloody thing should be finished doing whatever it is that little spinning beach balls do.

Riight. So then I vacuumed and dusted and balanced my checkbook (very scary moment there, btw), and came back to see a COMPLETELY BLACK SCREEN! Yep, and it wasn't a time out. The beach ball had left the building, so to speak. I had ten minutes of panic and then unplugged, replugged and restarted the machine. After what sounded (I swear) like a ginormous farting sound, it came back on and I quickly tried to launch my browser. I went to the main site and reinstalled the old browser I used to use and restarted.
This time it worked.

I thought all was right with my little space in the computer world, but then had to try three times to leave a comment on bff Cora Zane's blog. So I may have to get a fart extinguisher before all is said and done. Eeps!

2 comments:

Mary Kirkland said...

I hate having computer problems.

Cassandra said...

Hi Mary! Oh yep indeedy, it was like no matter what I did, the computer was not gonna cooperate. This morning, I turned it on and so far (knock on wood) it's working just fine. I wish I were smarter about computers and technology, then maybe I'd know what to do to fix things and keep it all running smoothly, but then again, I have friends who are tons more computer savvy than I am and they have computers issues too. Might simply be the nature of the beast, and boy do I mean beast! lol