I doubted long ago that it would come to this, but I need to get out of the house more often. Alas, I can no longer make peace with myself indoors, I need freedom beyond these walls. The more I begin to ponder reaching out, branching out into the real world, the more I begin to feel as though my electronic devices are getting ready for a rebellion. It all started with my laptop.
A few weeks ago a friend of mine gave me his old wireless router (I’m cheap, what can I say?) and I proceeded to set up a small wireless network that included only my laptop. The ACLs were set, WEP enabled, everything nice and semi-secure. After the honeymoon I neglected to turn on my laptop for a few days. Lo and behold, the battery is dead. I hadn’t turned it on during that time so why was it that the battery just up and dies? Meh, no biggie, happened before, just need to recharge it, recalibrate the “gas gauge”, just a two/three hour wait time.
By the time it was all said and done the battery lasted over four hours and still wasn’t ready to give up the ghost.
I’d like a new laptop right about now though… This sort of sporatic charging is what the batteries tend to do when they’re about to croak, at least that’s what one person said. To be honest, I haven’t had to deal with a laptop before this one so I really don’t quite know what to expect.
Now, more laptop fun. Aside from the dead battery I soon discover that Windows 2000 no longer detects my wireless card. I reinstall the drivers, remove the card a couple of times, reset the CMOS, nothing, it’s like the computer just won’t recognize the card’s even there!
After about fifteen minutes of fiddling I gave up, put the laptop back in its case, and started to work on a project that I had been postponing until the last minute.
In my infinite wisdom I decided to save all of my original documents with OpenOffice and then exported them to PDF. I kept the PDFs, I deleted the originals. What was I thinking??? I haven’t the slightest clue…
See, I knew it. They’re out to get me, and when I least expect it one evening they’ll quickly, stealthfully strangle me to death when I have my back turned.
I’ll end it here,
I need to get out more often.
