Computer Woes, Or the Near Loss and Triumphant Return of Sheng

(For those who don't know, Sheng is the name I affectionately gave my laptop when I first bought it, in honor of every teenybopper Hmong girl I knew who had that name.)

For the last many months my poor laptop has been running really low on hard drive memory.  I managed to delete things (music, mostly) in order to keep open at least 3-5 GB of her once available 170ish.  Eventually, at the recommendation of my technical support representative (more on him to follow), I decided I just had to break down and buy a new drive, and I found a really great deal for one that was 500 GB, which I thought I could surely never fill.  At first I thought I could just add a drive to use in addition to my current one, but I guess my computer doesn't have space to allow for that.  But I was informed that my drive could be cloned to the new and bigger one, so I bought it, but it kind of sat there for a few weeks... I'm kind of hesitant to make big changes like that sometimes because I'm afraid of losing everything on my computer and then where would I be??  Well, I would still probably be right here, but Sheng-less, so I just kind of toughed it out for a little while longer.  My hard drive kept reminding me that it was low on memory, and then one day, for no apparent reason, the whole thing just shut right off.

O.O

Of course that's the expected reaction when your computer inexplicably shuts off.  I waited a few minutes for it to cool down and then booted it back up.  It ran fine, but over the next few days shut off on its own once or twice more, and I noticed it was really hot where it sat on my knees (which is especially no fun when your apartment is already so roasty from the summer heat), so I decided the time had come for me to make arrangements to put it in the hands of the professionals.  "The professionals" is a phrase which here means my brother Matt, who is a master computerman and very, very awesome to always answer my questions about technology.  He's kind of like Kip in that he loves it.  So I let him know the latest developments about the shutting down (which he guessed was due to overheating and fan issues), and put Sheng and the new drive in his capable hands and left him to work his magic.

A day or two later I received an email from Matt with the prognosis, as well as the following pictures, assuring me in the email that "No laptops were harmed in the taking of these photos."

And still a work of art.

I think I started to panic a little when I glanced at this one, before I had read the actual email.

The pictures looked intense to me, and made me realize that while I might have been able to do this sort of thing myself (eventually, after hours of frustration and terror that I was going to do irreparable damange), I'm really glad that there are people with specific expertise for this very thing so I don't have to.  He told me that he could replace the hard drive, no problem, and cloning it would means it would be exactly like it was, but with much more available space.  As for the shutting down, his guess about overheating was right on--the fan was old and grungy and not working properly, so luckily Sheng was smart enough to just shut off when she overheated to avoid doing more serious damage to her innards.  Matt suggested I could either have him clean up the old fan and reinstall it to see if it works any better (unlikely), or I could just buy a new one (pretty inexpensive) and that one could be installed.  Naturally I just bought one and had it shipped to his place, and a couple weeks after I left it with him (oh my word, they do take their sweet time shipping those parts, don't they?) it was back at home and working better than ever!  And now she looks like this:

Just like the day I bought her, which is when this picture was actually taken.  Except my wallpaper now is much more attractive, because it's a picture of me and my stunning wife.

It took a couple of adjustments for her to get her bearings and remember who and where she was, and how to connect to our wireless signal, but now here I am not worrying about space every week when my podcasts download or wondering if she's going to shut down at any moment while she burns up my lap.  She's as good as new, and all of her parts are even better because all of her bolts have been tightened and all of her nooks and crannies have been swept clean.  Nothing like a happy laptop for laptopping.  The only payment Matt would accept for these particular services were fresh-baked cookies (pretty good if I say so myself) and girly giggles (see about 9:30 of the video).

As a side note, I'm kind of baffled by how hard drive space works sometimes, like how defragmenting the disk can actually leave you with less space, or how it might go down just because you open a file or move files around, and I have no idea how I could possibly have filled up 30 GB already...  But I'm not against housecleaning, doing an occasional iTunes sweep to delete songs I never listen to (or ones I didn't even know I had).  Sometimes less really is more.  Remember the days when we used to have towers and stacks of CDs?  Now I have it all right here on Sheng.  Packing my music for vacations is so much easier with an iPod than it was with a Discman and big old case of CDs, oh my word.


Thanks, Matt!  You're the best IT department/technical support ever!  To illustrate my feelings, here are a couple of relevant clips from The IT Crowd.  (And if there's a person in the reach of my blogvoice who hasn't watched The IT Crowd yet, do so forthwith.  Come on over, we have Series 1 on DVD.)  Enjoy:





Sheng returns!  And I'm one happy camper.  If your computer keeps giving you grief, Wife, we'll give her a similar facelift treatment, hmm?

It is My Great Pleasure to Introduce you to... UPDATED

Sheng Milicent!

It arrived late afternoon yesterday, and this is my first blog post written using it. It's a Compaq Presario CQ50, and its name was a subject of much internal debate and back-and-forth (both names are kind of a long story, but if you really want to know, maybe I'll tell later...). It was a really good deal (and even included free shipping!), and arrived in quite a timely manner. 200 GB hard drive, 3 GB memory, DVD/CD LightScribe burning drive, Windows Vista, 15.4" screen, etc. I'm loving it so far and having a good time transferring pertinent files from my dear desktop, which I still love and which is actually running quite well to date, to my new and portable notebook. Vista is taking some getting used to, but I think it's still cool, and undeniably gorgeous. Oh, how many times did I wish in undergraduate school that I had a laptop? I think it will be so convenient and make things a lot easier, but I'll also have the advantages of keeping a base station here at home.

Now all I'm waiting for is my wireless mini mouse and itty-bitty webcam to arrive from China or wherever.

Yay for a new toy. It's entertaining, and practical!

UPDATE: A few more specs, as were requested:

• AMD TurionX2 RM-70 Dual-Core Mobile Processor (2GHz)
• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1
• 3072MB DDR2 SDRAM
• 15.4" (diagonal) WXGA high-definition BrightView widescreen
• HP Imprint finish with integrated microphone
• Integrated 10/100Base-T Ethernet LAN modem
• 802.11b/g WLAN network connection
• 200GB (4200 rpm) hard drive
• Six-cell Lithium-Ion battery
• Double-layer DVD±R/RW SuperMulti drive with LightScribe capability
  
• Nvidia GeForce 8200M graphics
• 5-in-1 digital media card reader

A Productive Day -- UPDATED

Things I have taken care of today:


So, I guess I'm back on my way to Provo again for sure. I really hope my mission friends are still planning on moving there with me, because it took some real searching to find a place with more than one opening for a decent price.

I also freed myself of a project that I am unable to deal with at the moment. I feel like I accomplished quite a lot today! Now and then I just feel driven. Could be by unnecessary panic.

Update: So the apartment I had turned out to be a bust. Luckily they didn't process my application so there was no need to deal with refunds or broken contracts. I found a house for me and a mission friend to move into. Good location, reasonable price (they have just gone up since I was in school!), and it looks like a nice place! The landlord even threw in a nice giftcard from Target for both of us! As if he needed to provide incentive... There were a lot of people interested in the spots. I'm glad to live in a house instead of an apartment for a change, should be fun.

Back online at last

Okay, so it's only been two days since the internet went out inexplicably. Well, not exactly inexplicably... There was a split-second blip in the power on Monday night, which was apparently just enough to completely screw up the wireless router on the main computer in the house. For a while at least that computer was online, though it wouldn't let any nearby computers latch on. Anyway, after that, last night and all of today neither the wireless nor the main computer would log on. We were all at a loss, and today I was seriously losing it, home alone and off-line. I felt positively prehistoric! I am so spoiled and dependent. But I was just annoyed because a silly little blip in the power shouldn't cause such drastic ramifications! (And yes, there were actually two blips that night, so good thing I didn't get it up and running only to lose it all again!) And it was also annoying because the router software seemed to indicate that the wireless was working, and all of our computers should be recognized by the signal. Bleh. So then tonight I went running and to play volleyball with the singles ward, and then, came home, and decided to take good old Roy's general advice ("Have you tried turning it off and on again?"), even though I had tried this method many times already to this point. But I rebooted the computer, unplugged and replugged the internet router, and imagine my surpreeze when the internet appeared to work! Almost afraid of what would or wouldn't happen, I went and tried to connect mine, and voila, here I am, back in action.

It's funny how important things such as this become to you. I mean, work, school, play, so much depends on being connected in this way. What DID they do in the old days? And funny, for all my time-filling, I still feel like I didn't really accomplish that much...