My computer hates me
My laptop is nearly five years old, which is pretty ancient in technology standards. But for the most part, it does what I need it to do and that’s all I can ask for. Lately, it seems to be on a mission to make my life a living hell. I discovered it’s best not to turn it off on a regular basis because it does not like to be restarted. (Which takes the “portable” out of the equation). So I leave it on all the time and hope the power doesn’t go out. Once every 10 days or so, it likes to reboot itself in the middle of the night (which always wakes me up, usually around 3:00 in the morning). But as long as it comes back on, I’m okay with it. On Thursday, I realized I hadn’t restarted it in over two weeks. (I knew how long it had been because I had been signed into my instant messanger for almost 15 days straight). Anyway, I decided I would shut the computer off for awhile and see what happened. I came home and turned it back on and it took over 10 minutes to start up again. Once it did, there was no volume. The control had disappeared. So I had to turn it off and restart it four times before it finally brought the volume back. Then I went to watch a video on YouTube and it told me I needed the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. I went to download it and did so - about 20 times - to no avail. I gave up and decided to worry about it in a few days. Well, now it’s Sunday and I have to watch a YouTube video for my Business Beat class. I asked my dad to look at it and after two hours of reconfiguring things, he got the Flash Player to download and YouTube to work again. But then I tried to sign into AIM and it wouldn’t let me. Awesome. I managed to get that working again (I think it was an AOL problem, not my computer), but after restarting the computer multiple times, the volume had disappeared again. I figured I might as well go for broke and downloaded the latest version of Itunes. Five restarts later and I had volume again. But the screen keeps flashing on and off like a bad strobe light. If a close the top a few times, I can usually make it stop, but at that point, I already feel like I’m having a seizure. I’m pretty sure this is my computer’s way of warning me that its days are numbered and I need to prepare myself. I don’t have money to buy a new computer. The best I can hope for is that this one will at least make it through the last seven weeks of the semester.
