Dtown Tech Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Killed It

Two weeks ago, I lamented the toll taken by Pacha and Brutus’s zealous antics (aka ‘zoomies’) chasing each other from one room to the other on a rather dependable schedule every night. Streaking like lightning around the couch and threading the needle of other obstacles, they got snagged on the charger cord of my laptop and swept it onto the floor with a thud. I feared they’d killed it.

I was relieved to report that the initial diagnosis was a simple need for a new charger. It appeared that the charger had bent and simply needed to be replaced, since the experts at D’town Tech were able to plug it in and boot it back up. All was well that ended well. I ordered a new charger and counted my lucky stars.

Well, it turns out my celestial ciphering may have been a bit premature.

Resisting the Truth

When the new charger arrived from Amazon, I immediately plugged it into the machine and hoped it would charge overnight. When I awakened, it still refused to boot up.

Resisting the truth of what was playing out before my eyes, I told myself the old battery had been drained for so long that it finally gave up the ghost. All would be better when the new battery arrived and the experts replaced it.

Yeah. I wish.

On Election Day, Karl dropped the laptop back off at D’town Tech for replacement of its battery. Sadly, word came the next day that my Dell, while initially booting up just fine, after about 10 minutes was persistently seizing and then crashing. The cause was eluding them. The prognosis was dire.

From Bad to Worse

It’s funny; I look back on some of my earliest posts in this long saga, and I see that ten days into my 1111 Devotion, my Dell XPS went on the fritz. I documented my adventures with customer service (I had a premium warranty on the machine) as they stretched into Days 14 and 15 – ultimately resulting in replacement of the motherboard. Because my Dell crapped out on me in those early days of getting this discipline off the ground, I decided to write all my blog posts on my MacBook Air. And that’s how it’s been ever since.

But that doesn’t negate the fact that I use the Dell for so many of my day-to-day business and record-keeping activities. All of our financials, my legal work, etc., is on my Dell.

So you might imagine how deflating it was to discover that the hard drive was so damaged that they can’t even retrieve my data. They effectively killed it.

While I did back up a lot on an external hard drive, I didn’t update the backup nearly as recently as I should have. As I now wish I had.

An interesting ‘coincidence’ is how this issue came up almost exactly as many days into my 1111 Devotion as I am away from completing this Act of Power. It’s odd. Two weeks into it; and now two weeks from ending it. One thing I’m observing? I’m much less invested in what I’ve ‘lost’ than I would have been three years ago.

That in itself is worthy of contemplation and reflection.

Their first prey – “Killed it!” – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-14)

Butter Wouldn’t Melt In Their Mouths – Photo: L. Weikel

Zoomie Casualty

That didn’t take long, did it? I wrote about the ‘zoomies’ but two short nights ago and have already sustained a zoomie casualty. What’s that oft-used phrase popular in the vernacular? “F*#% around and find out?” Yep. That’s it.

Well, the pups did – and we found out.

It happened so quickly it was akin to a lightning strike. Our eyes met. Karl and I, although on opposite sides of the room, both knew immediately what that thud meant. It meant that the pups, in the midst of their zoomies (which we were only just starting to realize might be a normal thing and not some dietary anomaly) had tangled with the charger cord to my laptop and whisked the machine from its esteemed perch on a tray table and crashed it to the floor.

“I’m not going to look,” I said to Karl as I picked the laptop up off the floor. “Broken or not, there’s nothing I can do about it tonight. So whatever its status, it’ll hold until tomorrow. Truth be told, though? I could see the charger cord light was still on, so I took that as a good sign. I told myself the laptop was unscathed and I’d be pleasantly surprised in the morning.

Sadly, that turned out to be wishful thinking.

Could’ve Been Worse

The next morning revealed a disappointing fact: while the charger obviously was still getting juice from the wall, it was no longer effectively transmitting it to the machine. The black screen remained unresponsive, even when I pressed the power button. A brief (oh-so-brief) flicker of life appeared in the form of a light underneath the power button, but it faded with but a whimper of effort.

I checked my warranty – the super duper extended version had expired in January of this year. My only recourse was to take it to a local repair shop.

Enter D’town Tech. It turned out that the zoomie casualty was indeed the charger. This was confirmed by Taylor, who kindly recharged my battery long enough to properly close everything down. After that, I went on a hunt for a charger and discovered they are not as easy to find as one might think – yet another victim of the dreaded Covid shortages.

Just More Fun

After more running around than I would’ve liked, I ended up ordering it off Amazon. But that left me with the dilemma of giving a Wagon (a group journey as part of my ongoing Shamanic Caravan) with a totally different machine.

Those of you who’ve been reading my blog throughout this 1111 Devotion know that technological wizardry is not my forté. Initially I ran into the same problems I’d had in the beginning of this project, which was the machine deliberately ‘canceling’ the ‘noise’ of the rattle.

But I’m delighted to report that I figured it out. I didn’t panic. And the Wagon went off without a hitch.

Well, no. That’s not entirely true. I forgot – 7:00 p.m. (the Wagon’s start time), is also the ‘witching’ time for Pacha and Brutus to begin their crazy-antic running around ritual.

Let’s just say tonight’s journeyers received an extra layer of practice in conducting their work with – and without – distractions.