I can’t sleep.
I keep thinking I’m going to get a phone call from that company that employs computer nerds by the poundfull telling me they tried everything they could but they just couldn’t save any information from my laptop.
My less than a year old laptop.
The sole source of bread and butter for my children (and after taking a look at the scale, you can include me in enjoying that bread and butter - but thats another story) up and broke yesterday. More accurately, the screen up and cracked in two places.
A little back story - for the last six weeks I’ve been traveling for work so much I rarely backed up my laptop and I’m in the middle of a few big projects. Yeah, my fault, I know. I get it. So this whole no laptop thing is giving me grey more grey stress beyond belief.
I take the laptop to the local Nerd Herd (yes, I watch Chuck, what of it) and I’m told laptops don’t crack on their own and I had to have broken it myself. You’re right, it didn’t crack. The damn thing popped — like a popcorn POP — and the screen split. In front of my eyes. When all I wanted to do was open the laptop and log in to Twitter, check email and open the latest MS Word document file needing my attention.
Then the genius (not to be confused with a Mac Genius because I haven’t moved out of the Jurassic era and just bought a Macbook already!) asked me if I threw it or dropped it. No dude didn’t you hear me! He pulls up my information in the computer and asks “Why do you have two last names?” First, I dont. Secondly, have you never heard of people with two last names? Third, PERICON and INC are not two last names. You put my first name in front of it and you get my company name. Can you not read the screen?! I’m worried if you can’t read that screen in front of you. And last, who cares!!!??? Just work on my computer already. Wait, I’m not sure I want you to. Just hand it off to someone who can help me.
By this time, I’m nervous handing over the source of livelyhood for my family to the only nitwit working at the time. And the best part is yet to come - I’m then told my insurance doesn’t cover my laptop issue because its not possible that the laptop screen split on its own. Yeah, batteries blow up. Harddrives die. But LCD screens cannot act up. Uh huh. Sure.
He says I have to pay out of pocket and they’ll send it to Kentucky or Arkansas or Detroit. At this point, all I remember is that its somewhere not in zip code 10028. And he says he’ll have to give me an estimate since I have so many GBs on the laptop. An estimate? Really? ok… so I think quickly and ask him to just take all my information off the laptop. All the files, put it on the bubble gum pink external hard drive I brought with me and call it a day. Thats it. Just take all my stuff and save it.
Why pay to repair the laptop when laptops are so inexpensive nowadays (Long gone are the days where I need to spend over $1500 on a PC laptop.) I’ve decided to buy a new one (yes, still not moving over to Mac) and just put all the old files onto it.
He gets this piece of paper and asks which files I want to save. Um, all of them. And where my files are saved Um, everywhere. I tell him the MS Word documents, my photos (of my kids! and business trips!) and video (from work!!) are the most important after he saves my MS Outlook .pst files because I need all my work emails.
But then he asks me if I have any porn on my laptop that he should save? What? I just told him I was all about work. He offers this tidbit “Four people a week come in here asking for us to specifically save their porn. It means so much to them.” Call me a prude but what???
Anyway, my laptop is “in good hands” and on Thursday I get to pick it up with my precious files. I didn’t pay the extra $400 to pick it up this evening. Didn’t make sense. I’m already being forced to spend money unnecessarily because they think I broke my laptop by throwing it against a wall or something.
This whole laptop situation is driving me to want to eat more shovel food in my month. Yes, I said it even after declaring my middle name should be Orca I’m bursting at the seams. There’s no hope for me. None.
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Next stop – Picking up my laptop then transfering the files from the external hard drive to the new laptop (which I haven’t bought yet - any suggestions?) finding a new school for Luke and Harrison (a story for another day!) and then taking Miss Nat to her first Tai Kwan Do class — yet another story.
Car Song – “Um, did you back up your data?” Aidan to Carrie in Sex and the City
