My Extended Absence

Last week was a full-on, all-out, direct assault on my One Little Word, my JOY.

Last Saturday, as DD8 was playing Webkinz my laptop, my beloved connection to the outside world while SSCB is out of town, popped a little script error. I didn't think anything of it and cancelled the script. My LT immediately became horrifically slow. Uh-oh.

My first thought was that I had been attacked by malware or a spybot. I started the programs to detect that and went about my business. Over the course of the evening, though, the LT performance got worse and worse, so I called my first line of tech support, my IT expert DAD!

Dad had me do some things to try and give him an idea of what might be going on. We tried what seemed like everything, to no avail and finally the LT shut itself down and when I finally coaxed it into turning back on informed me that it had overheated. Oh no.

After coming to the conclusion that this was unlike anything he had ever seen Dad advised me to turn off the LT and he would come by after church to see what he could do.

Fast-forward to Sunday afternoon. My Dad came over with a bunch of his magic IT CDs and starts trying to figure out what happened. The LT gets gradually worse. Finally, we make the call. Dell Support!

They try to figure out what is going on. Their just as confused as my Dad, but between them and Dad they decide that it must be a hardware problem and decide to replace some parts. The repair guy will be out on Wednesday.

Wednesday comes and the repair guy comes out. He replaces everything inside the LT except the hard-drive and video card. Drum-roll please......... press the power button and NOTHING! I think I am going to cry. He calls Dell support and between them decide to try again, this time also replacing the video card.

Long story short? My computer's insides are brand new except for the hard drive.

The video card burned itself out.

Moral of the Story? Always buy the extended warranty!

So here I am, back to business. The good news is that we got LOTS of school done. LOTS of ironing too. Thankfully the dinosaur server in the office allowed me to check my email, but not much else.

But my beloved laptop is back in business and just as good as it ever was.

My faith in humanity has been restored.... :)