Tuesday 12 May 2009

...we have the technology

I got a new lappy. Yayyy!

For those who don't know (and why would they seeing as I just made it up), a lappy is a cool new way of saying laptop, which is a daggy word for notebook.

You see for the last several months I have been struggling with an uncooperative pooter. It would crash with increasing frequency, with the occasional blue screen of death, and usually 1 second before I would try to press the 'save' button. I lost 50 freshly scanned photos to that one the other night.

It would take about 1 hour to turn the thing on, not to warm up but to actually get Windows to boot. The 'on' button meant a black screen 80% of the time. Repeated pressings eventually got me to a message along the lines of...

Your pooter is buggered. We don't know what's wrong with the bitch, so all we can do is give you three choices, each one as pointless as the next.
1. Start Windows in Safe Mode

2. Not Start Windows in Safe Mode
3. Start with the last known settings that worked.


They all ended in the same place. Nowhere. I started having fantasies of throwing my lappy out the window and onto the concrete driveway. How many ways could I kill it? I could drown it, in a swimming pool, or pour boiling porridge over it. Spearing it would be just awesome! I might throw it on a bonfire, and watch it spark and melt and explode. Oooh tHAt woULd FeEL GOOD WOOHOO! KILL KILL MURDER HA HAHAHA!!! YOU'LL NEVER MISBEHAVE AGAIN MY LITTLE FRIEND!

I had people poke and prod at it. I had the smarter people at work look into it, run scans and checks, stick thermometers into it, etc. to no avail. I was just about to take it down to the Soul Sucking Reincarnator (actually my dad Brian) for a complete mind wipe and reinstallation of its operating system, when I thought I had it sussed. When you punched the area next to the touchpad immediately after pressing the power button, it worked! Booted up normally and worked... for at least a few good hours anyway. Only problem is that I had to punch it with increasing severity as it started to become desensitised to all the violence. After a while the punches didn't work anymore but it felt really good. I don't consider myself a violent person, and I have never punched a living in my life (except my big sister in the 1980's, but you would have too coz she could be the Queen of Evil and oh so mean and terrible), but I'm quite partial to give the odd appliance a bit of a whack when it plays up on me, like Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, except without all the girls and hanging around public toilets.

Surprisingly, I had the sense to back up all my useful files (and their viruses) onto an external HDD so I can can copy them to my new one, because my old computer crashed for the very last time on Sunday night.

But it sure looked cool as it hit the floorboards at high speed and the screen erupted into a psychodelic pattern. That'll larn it.


Its shame it ended so acrimoniously. So many good times together, four long years, so many memories, and so many more hours of my life where I don't remember a single damn thing. All the games we played, puzzles we solved, stories we read and boobies we've seen. All the laughter and tears, now just ancient whispers on the winds of better times.


Nah. Boo sucks to that. This one craps all over that stupid thing. Can't believe I waited so long.

7 Comments:

At 13 May 2009 at 08:15 , Blogger Kath Lockett said...

Mmmm, you're starting to convince me.... My lappy is also starting to function slower than a public servant on pension day and even though LC reckons we should get a desktop with all the bells and whistles, I want a lappy again.

...with all the bells and whistles. I actually like typing on a lappy and being able to unplug it and take it with me. Mine's also four years old, and I've got a draft blog article set up about how I've worn off the lettering on some keys. Inexplicably, they're the K, L, H, I and N ones.

 
At 13 May 2009 at 09:07 , Blogger Catastrophe Waitress said...

excellent.
excellent!

so does this mean you'll be posting more often? that i get an extra large helping of Man At The Pub with my steaming hot bowl of porridge?

 
At 13 May 2009 at 10:38 , Blogger Cinema Minima said...

Do it Kath. It's gonna happen sooner or later and you'll never look back. Nothing inexplicable about it...
K=Kath, L=Lindt, H=home, I=investigative blogging, N=never say never again!

 
At 13 May 2009 at 10:45 , Blogger Cinema Minima said...

Projectivist - I hope to. I generally post late at night so I guess I'm ideal for a bit o breakfast or brunch blogging.

 
At 13 May 2009 at 12:05 , Blogger Kath Lockett said...

Oh well done - I might 'borrow' your comment for a blog article on those five, worn-out letters.

What brand lappy do you have?

 
At 13 May 2009 at 12:58 , Blogger Cinema Minima said...

Feel free.
Actually you've kind of caught me out. My new lappy is the exact same model as the last one, HP Compaq (6170?), it'll do all the things I want it to, but I'm sure the lastest models are even better. I got the 'new' one as an ex-work machine. But it has hardly been used, and it is so clean and fast and free of crap, for now anyway.

Tip: My Q has a new Dell and she swears by it.

 
At 14 May 2009 at 13:17 , Blogger Kath Lockett said...

Oooher, my faithful (but failing) lappy is a compaq as well.

 

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