Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Two Weeks of #TechHell ~ #techfail #amwriting #needhelp

My old laptop was my favorite color,
red, but this was clearly a problem
I wrote recently about how I was lucky enough to take ten days off in mid-July for a family vacation that involved four states plus the District of Columbia in ten days.  Not super relaxing.  Before we left, my well-loved but slightly ancient laptop began crashing regularly.  Add to that a screen that was physically broken off the hinges (which would have proved quite inconvenient while traveling) and a battery that wouldn't hold a charge for even five seconds...it was time to bite the bullet and buy a new one.

This fortune was in my cookie at
a very challenging time for me

I didn't want to. And not just because of the expense.  My loyal laptop has been with me since around 2010.  I've written four novels on it.  There is a fortune from a Chinese restaurant taped to the keyboard stating "Real courage is moving forward when the outcome is uncertain"...something I drew strength from as I began the process of a lengthy revise and resubmit to the publisher that would eventually contract my debut novel SILVER LAKE.  That laptop and I have been through a lot together.  But my old faithful friend was clearly on its last flickering legs.

Miraculously, the new laptop arrived before we left.  Which was excellent, because I knew I had to prepare my last three-hour presentation for the fiction class I teach for the local college.  It's a pain to set up a new computer, in my opinion anyway, but I set about personalizing it, transferring files, saving favorite sites and passwords, etc.

Every chance I got during vacation, I worked on my slide show.  I had to have it done by the Monday prior to class for printing.  I managed to finish, powered back up that night to send it in...and discovered the keyboard of my new laptop no longer worked.  Well, the left side, specifically.  And I could not actually log in without letters from the left side.  Cut to me, having a panic attack.  Not pretty.  There were tears.

Thankfully, I realized this new-fangled laptop has a touch screen in addition to the physical keyboard.  I was able to log in and send my presentation--and quickly save it to a thumb drive. But I sure couldn't do any real work with a touch screen.  After numerous calls to tech support lasting well into several nights, the company finally sent a repair person to my house to replace the keyboard.  "B" is still quirky, but I'm back in business anyway (a lot of "B"s in that sentence...sigh).

Then I made the mistake of moving our internet modem/router at the request of my teenage son, who would like a wi-fi connection in his room.  I don't blame him...it's frustrating.  We have an amplifier and he still doesn't get a signal, despite the fact that we don't exactly live in a mansion. Well, touching the stupid thing knocked down the entire precarious house of cards.  Somehow, we lost internet, cable, and the landline phone.  Even when I put it back where it came from...radio silence.

Calls to support.  More calls.  Desperate pleas.  A visit from a tech.  An appointment with an electrician.  New equipment.  Finally, we have internet and cable again...but not in my kid's room still, which began the whole mess.  Maybe I will worry about that in the future, but for now...if I have to wait around one more day for someone to show up at some point during a prolonged window of time and tell me I need to call someone else, I will lose it.  

Now, I realize these are not tragic problems, thankfully.  Merely inconveniences.  But I can't do my job--writing--without a keyboard, and I can't do the other part of my job--staying connected with readers and working with other authors--without the internet.  And of course, I'm the one organizing a big virtual party for a release event (Join here on Facebook - lots of prizes and gift cards to be had!).  So, at least for the immediate future, I'm not going to touch anything with a power cord.  And I'm going to ignore the niggling suspicion in the back of my mind that one of the ghosts from my novels is having some fun with me...

No comments:

Post a Comment