Thursday, June 16, 2011

Waiting to Boot

My laptop is a relic, the last the I own from the adventure of The Firm, a 2005 Presario 2200 from Compaq. It quietly sits in the 4 x 4' area allocated to me as my "offic" atop the second floor. It's older, but still functions effectively for what computers are supposed to do.

It is, however, occasionally frustrating.

As in this morning, when I started it. It ran through its initial start-up "Windows" materials, then rolled into the main screen. I started mentally preparing myself to write this morning, and waited for the computer to finish booting.

And waited. And waited.

Frustrated, I clicked in on the Explorer icon, hoping to kick it over to what I needed. I initially successful - the window came up - but then I couldn't do anything in it. Suddenly another window came up, then a third and fourth. I tried to close two of the windows, becoming increasingly aggravated. The computer then helpfully kicks up the "failure to close" window, so now I have five windows open. Point and click, point and click, until windows 3-5 are gone. I'm back down to 2 windows - but now I can't get into either of those, and then they both close on me as well.

It's now 15 minutes since I initially turned the computer.

Fine. I try Explorer again. One window comes up again - Yay! Then a second one. It then becomes a race - which one will allow me to get to my e-mail? I bet my effort on the first window but it sticks. Suddenly, the second window pops up, ready for me to enter my password.
I enter it, but then the first window pops back, ready to go. Do I close the first window which seems to be working, or the second window, which seems to be faster now? I choose the second, only to have it stick while the first window comes back victorious.

It is now approximately 25 minutes since I booted the computer.

As I sit here in my frustration, trying to be patient, reminding myself that I am blessed to have a computer, reading, looking at the computer, becoming more aggravated then trying to redirect myself - suddenly I realize that this reminds me of how my life feels so often: always waiting for it to boot up, becoming frustrated when it doesn't start up and trying to find something else to do while I wait, then looking at it, the clock, and thinking things should be moving faster.

I could always get another computer. How do I boot my life up faster?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are welcome (and necessary, for good conversation). If you could take the time to be kind and not practice profanity, it would be appreciated. Thanks for posting!