Dell

In a Daze – ND #33

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Is that a light at the end of a tunnel? Photo: L. Weikel

In a Daze

I’m in a daze this evening. The fact that I didn’t walk today is partially to blame. But the more significant cause of my malaise is the six straight hours I spent in front of our computer painstakingly recreating our Quicken records for the past nine months. And I don’t even have the job halfway completed.

Yes, this is all my fault.

As you may recall, back when I was rediscovering the reality of ‘zoomies,’ the pups accidentally snagged the charging cord on my Dell laptop, sweeping the machine clear off its table like a magician performing a tablecloth trick. Only the laptop was the tablecloth (not the china), and it dropped with a swoosh onto the rug.

Alas, in spite of an initially optimistic diagnosis by the local computer repair shop, it was pronounced deader than a doornail about a week later. Specifically, something broke in the hard drive, rendering it unreadable without investing a couple thousand into an attempt at recapturing the information (i.e., no guarantees).

Even though I was proud of myself for having intermittently backed up both laptops on an external hard drive, it seems my sense of timing is a bit skewed by the pandemic. (At least that’s my excuse.) Turns out it’s been a lot longer since I backed them up than I realized. Seven months, to be precise. And since I’m only just now getting around to reconstituting all the financial data I kept in Quicken, I’m now tasked with entering nine months’ worth of entries. And not just our personal stuff, either.

A Perfect Day

The dismal, overcast, gloppy weather today lent itself perfectly to putting my nose to the grindstone. I became lost in my task, barely taking time to even get up from my workspace until well after dark. Looking out the window as the hours ticked by failed to distract me from my task. All it did was make me sad because I knew I had no intention of walking in drizzle.

I think Karl feared what I might concoct for dinner after such single-minded focus on figures, so he ran out for pizza without even telling me ahead of time. I’d planned on making a stew with dumplings, but he assures me a cold snap later this week will make the stew even more welcome a few days from now.

As frigid as the temperatures were last night (it was 18 degrees at 6:00 p.m.), judging from my most recent visit to the outdoors with the pups, the air feels weird tonight. It feels warmish out there and that doesn’t feel right to me. All of which exacerbates my sense that I’m in a daze.

But since I know I’m going to be toiling over this data entry for at least a couple more days, I just want to preach from the mountaintop: back up your data regularly and often. Preferably more often than every seven months.

(T+33)

Killed It – Day 1097

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Brutie and the Dell – Photo: L. Weikel

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)

Aggravation – Day 844

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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)

First Hot One – Day 589

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Spartacus – Photo: L. Weikel

First Hot One

I wasn’t sure how I wanted to title tonight’s post. Obviously, it’s a commentary on Spartacus’s sprawling position under the birdfeeders today. With his toy and a bottle nearby (albeit of olive oil), you would be forgiven for assuming Spart had partaken in a night of debauchery. Instead of “First Hot One,” I nearly named it, “What a Night!”

I chose  “First Hot One,” because like clockwork, the solstice occurs and we get slammed with oppressive heat and humidity. And that definitely was the case today, although I know the humidity can (and will) get even worse.

But today was one of the first days of truly summer weather. The thunderheads gathering in massive, billowing threats on the horizon struck fear in our hearts as we crested the first hill on our shorter trek. A jagged flash of piercing lightning struck just ahead of us, and almost instantaneously a massive thunder clap let us know that jagged strike had issued forth much closer than was comfortable

Sheila’s daily constitutional would have to be cut short tonight, which was not a welcome development for either of us. I needed a walk. Desperately.

Crisis Averted

Why? Because unbelievably (in hindsight), I tried to help my laptop complete its Windows 10 update (which it insisted on telling me day after day was needed) but which it kept informing me was unable to be consummated because I didn’t have enough memory on my laptop. So I bit the bullet. I took care of business with an external hard drive and moved some files around.

And I forgot Mercury was retrograde.

I actually forgot that messing around with my laptops when Mercury is retrograde has not ended well for me in the past. Indeed, I’ve even written about some of those debacles – at length – and the disastrous results that, for one thing, explain why I write all of my posts on my Apple instead of the Dell.

How did I forget the sins of my past?!

Black Screen White Cursor

Well, that just goes to show how we can get lulled into a sense of complacency and then – bam!

All of a sudden, I was looking at a black screen. Not a blue screen of death (thank goodness), but a black screen that I couldn’t coax into doing anything else. No control-alt-delete. No holding the power button down for a really, really long time. Nothing. In fact, it looked as though the power was off, although eventually a white cursor seemed to randomly show up. But that was it, the only concession the machine would make to me bringing it inside. (Karl insisted it was probably just hot.)

And that’s when it hit me that I’d been to this rodeo with this stupid computer (the Dell) – once before – during Mercury Retrograde.

All’s well that ends well (so far anyway). It looks like this snafu may have been connected to the Windows update.

Would someone please remind me never to update Windows again when Mercury is retrograde?!

After all was said and done, believe me when I say that I felt like Spartacus looks in that photo above. Worn the heck out.

So much for the first hot one of the season.

Thunderheads matching my mood! – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-522)

Resolution – Day Sixteen (T-1095)

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Resolution

I received a phone call first thing this morning from a man who identified himself as a Dell Service Technician. “Hi, I’m Steve and I’m calling about a Dell service issue?”

“Yes,” I replied, waiting, trying not to launch my frustration onto him.

“Yeah, I understand you’re having issues with your–” he continued. I laughed, interrupting him.

“Umm, yeah, you could say that.”

“I’m calling to set up an agreeable day and time for me to come out and see if I can help,” he continued, plowing through my slightly snide response.

“Today, to answer your question.” I responded promptly. “And now would be good.”

Steve laughed. I did too. But then I added, “We laugh, but I’m serious.”

“Hang on,” Steve replied, and I could hear him shuffling papers in the background.

“Umm, I can get there between 10:30 and 12:30…”

“Today?” I interrupted, somewhat incredulously, given my initial impression that he was scheduling for later in the week.

“Today.”

“I will be here! Let’s make it happen,” I assured him. “That is so great. Thank you.”

Technician in Shining Armor

And so it was that my Technician in Shining Armor arrived around 11:00 a.m. with both a new motherboard and a new LCD display (more accurately identified as the entire screen/top half of my laptop), which he very adeptly installed (with only minimal feline oversight), effectively leaving me with a virtually new laptop.

“If the symptoms should reoccur at all within the next few days,” Steve shared upon completion of his mission, which included installing a whole new Microsoft operating system, “we’ll know it’s nota hardware issue.”

“Which means I shouldn’t call you, eh?” I laughed.

“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “Not. My. Thing.”

Nice guy. No nonsense. Five stars.

Dell is lucky to have such a first class independent contractor. And I’m lucky it was Steve who showed up today.

——————————-

Funny thing, though?

As I started writing tonight’s post on the Dell, I realized I was feeling disloyal to my MacBook, so I’m writing this post on ‘her’ tonight. She got me through this debacle without missing a beat (besides getting knocked off the internet a zillion times in Boston, resulting in the post not getting uploaded until 12:02 a.m. that one night). But that wasn’t her fault.

We’ve become quite a team over the past week. She kept me from succumbing to resistance and blockages. Perhaps I will write all of my posts on her from now on. We’ll see!

Mercury Rx or Lemon Laptop – Day Ten (T-1101)

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Mercury Retrograde? Or Just a Lemon Laptop?

Technically, Mercury is ‘retrograde’ now. It stationed and started appearing to move backwards from our perspective on Earth (obviously the planet is not literally moving backwards) on November 16thand will station and ‘go direct’ again on December 6th. When this happens, which it does three or four times per year, I think, the astrological lore is that many things associated with communication, electronics, appliances, etc., go on haywire, or are easily messed up somehow.

It is generally recommended that one not sign contracts during a period of Mercury retrograde, nor purchase electronics or other appliances – and it’s quite possible that wires of communications will get crossed and misunderstandings can abound. Phone calls drop more easily, emails don’t go through, etc., etc.

Interestingly enough, Sunday night, as I was putting the final touches on my post for that night, the screen on my Dell laptop started flickering. I immediately felt that queasy feeling. I’d seen this before. It stopped, and I completed what I was writing, hoping maybe I’d imagined that <<flicker>>.

I’d been down at the cabin and I had to get home so I could connect to the internet to publish the post. When I opened up my laptop here at home – oh my. The screen was fritzing into bands of gray pixels, then yellow band with jagged edges of orange and yellow, then bands of blue. (Even though it wasn’t, it looked like it should be making a crackly, hissy, zzzt zzzt noise.) The screen would revert back to showing the desktop, but little lightning like dots were randomly darting here and there and it was clear to me that it was rapidly losing its mind, so I frantically emailed myself the two posts I’d written that day. I was determined to neither lose those posts nor miss my deadline. The cursor literally froze in place after I hit <<send>>.

Lucky for me, we have another laptop and I was able to file that post before midnight.

On Monday, I called Dell’s premium support desk and ended up spending over five hours on the phone with them, during which they put both my computer and me through our paces. I was surprised when the technician took a snippy attitude with me; he acted a bit patronizing and assumed a couple of times that what I was reporting happening or seeing on the screen wasn’t so.

After five straight hours working on the machine together, he did something to it remotely that would take about two hours to complete. He said he would call me back to see if it successfully resolved the issue.

It did not. My tech did not call me back personally. Instead, “Joel” called me, saying my tech was on another call. Joel sounded chagrined that the procedure had not worked, put me on hold, and told me my tech would call me back at 11:00 a.m. EST Tuesday (yesterday) morning.

He did not.

In fact, NO ONE from Dell premium support (such as it is) called me yesterday. Naturally, I waited around for several hours. I need my laptop. (And no, I only have an 800 # for Dell – the techs call us; we don’t call the techs.) NOT ONE CALL. MY LAPTOP IS DEAD.

Oh, and did I mention this exact same thing happened in September? After spending hours and hours on the computer that time, they made me SEND IT IN to Dell (even though I have on-site service), and – a week later –  told me there was nothing wrong with it. They did a total reset of my computer (all my programs had to be reinstalled), but there was nothing wrong with it. Right.

And now it was happening again, two months later.

As I said, they did not have the courtesy to call me back yesterday after taking up over five hours of my time on Monday and failing to fix it.

Today, I was in a session all day. My phone was on silent, as I was with a client. There was ONE phone call from Dell: at 1:52 p.m. At 1:55 p.m., this guy had the unmitigated temerity to write me an email saying that he had “tried unsuccessfully to reach me” and since he didn’t get through to me, he was “archiving my service request.”

Can you see the steam coming out of my ears?

I thought I didn’t have anything to write about tonight. And I obviously didn’t have anything thoughtful to share.

But be aware of Mercury retrograde. Ha. Or crappy “premium” service by Dell.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve – and my apologies for being a crank.

I’m just grateful we have a MacBook Air in the house.