Why have the Laptop gods cursed me?

So, because my laptop is broken, I am blogging to you from my “smart phone”. My BlackBerry happens to have the capability to view Word documents, so I’ve typed this on another computer and e-mailed it to myself. I also can’t really update my 365 Project, because even if I take pictures, I have no where to post them or save them. So I haven’t taken any pictures since Friday.

Isn’t technology amazing?

Sometimes. The reason I have to now blog from my phone is because on Friday night, it stopped working. I haven’t dropped it, deleted system requirements, rearranged anything – since I got it about 2 years ago. I remember buying it for myself with gift cards for my birthday in 2007. The only thing that has happened to it is that I spilled a drink on it just over a year ago, and it’s been working fine. My keys have been sticky or stiff at times, but that’s it. I also somehow managed to break my disc drive by closing it too fast around the same time and now it’s off the track and won’t read discs.

But I don’t feel that either of those would have led to my current issue.

I had left my computer on, and Justin wanted to watch a movie that I had downloaded earlier. So I opened the screen and starting getting it ready. I loaded it into the Windows Media player, and realized there was no sound. It’s not unusual for me to mute the computer, so I thought that was it – nope. The mute was off. So I thought maybe the volume on the computer or player was down low? Nope. Perfectly fine. In the time it took me to try these things out to try and get sound, my computer got really slow, and pretty much just freezed – but the movie kept playing. So I couldn’t figure out why the stupid thing wouldn’t play sound. Then I did something I’ve done a million times before. I held the power button down until the computer just turned off. Then I waited a few minutes and pressed the power button again to turn it back on. Past history proved to me that it would just let me know it was turned off improperly and would I like to continue in Safe Mode? That definitely did not happen this time.

This time, a black screen with simple white text asked me that first question. How would I like to continue starting up my computer? I let it select the normal mode, knowing (based on history) that it would be fine. It thinks for a minute, then tells me it cannot perform that function, because something is missing or corrupted. So now I don’t know if something happened to it because I downloaded that movie, or because I held down the power button too long one time too many for the laptop gods. So computer gods – how can I fix this? Oh, just put in my start-up disc and reload? That would be great – if my disc drive worked!!!!!

I’m out of luck. Computer repair is expensive, especially if I have to retrieve every picture I’ve taken since late 2004, and over 2,500 songs. Not to mention all of my programs and settings. And a new disc drive. But if I don’t, I don’t have any of those things anyway. Even if I could afford a new laptop, why wouldn’t I just get the one I have fixed with that money, and the new one wouldn’t have my pictures and music.

I can live without out if I have to, but things like my pictures, my resume, my songs, and other things are on there, and I’m going to want to look at them again at one point.

I’m hoping if I leave my computer alone for a week, that I will go back to it and all of a sudden it will be working again on it’s own. But not if it’s missing something or if something is corrupted. Someone needs to fix it. It will be a few months before that happens.