By Jim Hagarty
2016
A year ago, in an effort to improve the performance of my little Acer netbook, I dipsied when I should have doodled, I guess, and the good machine, which had served me well for a few years, just up and quit. And by quit, I mean it would no longer turn on. The monitor was black and permanently so, it seemed. In fact, I listened carefully but could not even detect the telltale whirring of the hard drive.
I spent a few frantic weeks trying to get the little creature breathing again but it was done.
So, I did as I always do, and paid a visit to the Church of Google to pray and seek counsel. Nothing but Hell and Damnation from the adherents of the Church. I had fried the little bugger and would see it alive no more. I didn’t find even one Internet self-described techie who would offer me any encouragement.
With a heavy heart one day I took my netbook out to the garage and put it up high on a shelf. The garage is the cellblock where the doomed await the death penalty. I relegate all our old broken down tech things to a box and when it gets full, I cart the whole affair to the local e-waste depot and sob as I leave it all there.
I have made one of those trips since the netbook was quarantined but for some reason, I didn’t toss it in the box.
So for months, it has sat alone on the shelf in the garage, quietly awaiting its fate.
Yesterday, however, I took it down and brought it back into the house. Off and on throughout the day, I wandered over to it and tried every single thing I could think of with not even a whisper of success. I even spread out both hands and pressed down every key on the keyboard while it was starting up.
Nothing.
However, some progress. The hard drive was obviously whirring away again but I had no idea what I had done to make that happen.
And then, the monitor started glowing, a very low light, but the extreme CPR must have shook something loose. But the glow stopped and now I was frantic to get it back. I couldn’t possibly lose my patient for a second time.
Finally, I held down the two mouse buttons while pressing the on switch.
The computer started back up again just as it always had before my intervention of a year ago. For 24 hours now, it has worked as well as it ever did.
I have always hated to admit defeat. I have admitted defeat lots of times. But I have always hated to.
But about the only benefit to having an obsessive personality is the burst of joy that comes over you when all your crazy single mindedness is rewarded now and then.
I am feeling very Steve Jobsian tonight.
Yay!
