update Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

My Dell’s Computer Screen (at the moment) – Photo: L. Weikel

Aggravation

If you take a look at the photo that’s leading this post, you probably won’t need me to write many words to convey to you the source of my aggravation. Thank you, Windows.

Higher Being help me, it seems like every time I try to ‘do the right thing’ and either backup or update one of my devices, it is rarely a benign event.

All My Fault

It’s probably all my fault. (I know; hard to believe, given some of the travails I’ve written about in times gone by.) Specifically though, yesterday I had the brilliant idea that I should do a global backup on the external hard drive I bought back in June for just that purpose. I don’t know what made me look at it, but the box in which I keep the hard drive crossed my path and I realized I’d only backed everything up once – the day I bought the hard drive. In June.

I must’ve been delirious with spring fever because I jumped right in and clicked on something that ended up backing up the entire laptop again, instead of just the documents and programs that had changed since June. Ugh. Imagine my internal freak-out when the screen informed me that the process would take four days. FOUR DAYS?

That’s what it said, but it only took – in actuality – about nine hours. Yea!

Lulled Into Trusting My PC

I will admit, I was feeling pretty badass. Undeservedly, as it turns out. But hey, it felt great while it lasted. I woke up this morning and that baby was backed up. Sweet.

So after working a few hours this morning and into the afternoon, something rather large and prominent appeared on my computer advising that Windows reeeeaaalllly needed to update either to Windows 10 or make changes to Windows 10. I don’t know. I forget, honestly. All I know is, it was telling me I didn’t have enough free space on my device to properly install these updates. But – and here’s where I got lulled into believing I could do this – it specifically said that if I connected an external hard drive to the laptop that had ‘x’ amount of free space (which I knew my hard drive had) it could get the job done all by itself.

Hell yeah!

I was totally stoked that I actually knew how to do this (ya know – plug the hard drive into the laptop via a USB cord – high stakes technological know-how) and would be able to avail myself of the latest improvements to my operating system.

A Fool and Her Laptop

And so I blissfully followed the Windows update instructions, connected the external hard drive, and crossed my fingers that I wasn’t going to mess up all my applications and programs and everything else I’ve worked so hard at becoming haltingly familiar with using.

Imagine my horror when I left the laptop to work in another room, only to come back two hours later with the assessment pictured above – but instead of 18% it said 0%. 0%! After two hours!

The photo accompanying this was just taken by me close to midnight. It’s been ten hours. It’s at 18%. And if that weren’t bad enough – it’s been at 18% since 8:30 this evening. It hasn’t budged a single percentage point in (looking at my watch now) over four hours. Good grief.

So aggravation is my word for the day. Aggravation with a dash of terror around the edges.

Here’s hoping I wake up tomorrow with a laptop that’s zipping along with a whole new lease on life.

A girl can dream.

(T-267)

Update

I’d like to provide you with an update, lest you all think I was hallucinating (or perhaps fantasizing) in yesterday’s post about having given an interview on KYW Newsradio. The most recent information I have is that it will air over the weekend.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I think it may air a couple of times over the course of the day Saturday or Sunday. At least that’s how I recall segments playing on that station. And let’s face it: I have no idea. So if you happen to catch it, yea!

They’re quick – I think they’re only like a minute long or something. Which actually feels like a trick of time. I’m fascinated when I watch any kind of program that involves interviews and they say, for example, “We only have 40 seconds left, Jim, but tell me you life’s story.” And then it seems they have enough time to do precisely that!

Regardless of whether anyone happens to actually hear it in ‘real time’ on the radio, though, I can promise you that I will indulge my delight and gratitude for this opportunity by providing the link in a follow up blog post.

In the Meantime

In the meantime, I am sitting here listening to the steady beat of raindrops falling outside. I knew it was coming (and I flirted with the idea of cutting the grass earlier this week), but I’m dreading our first lawn mowing. I thought about mowing earlier in the week, but now that we procrastinated on getting the job done today, it’s probably going to have to wait until the weekend. It will be a mile high in some places by then.

Funny. I don’t know what made me write that last paragraph. I think it was the sound of the rain and the sense that I can almost feel the grass growing as I sit here typing this.

Ha.

It’ll probably be good to get into a familiar rhythm again. The rhythm of mowing the lawn. Yes, it will be a good thing.