Life in progress

Tag Archives: laptops


by 13 Comments

JusJoJan25 the 12th – Notifications on

This post is part of Just Jot it January, and the prompt word, “notifications,” comes to us courtesy of Sadje. Check out her blog here!

Sometime in the last week or so, I wrote about my poor old laptop and that I was going to take her into the shop to either get her fixed or replace her.

Well, I think she heard me. Or maybe she got upset that I wrote my JusJoJan post on another computer, because lo and behold, when I turned her on to get a file off her that day, she stopped making the horrible noise that made me determined to take her in.

In other words, she knew she was on notice to behave.

Well, today the noise came back.

So I’m here posting on my other computer again.

I’m tempted to try starting the old gal up again to see if she’ll behave for another week—after all, if I hadn’t done it last time, I’d have been at the Geek Squad counter swearing up and down that really, the hard drive was making a noise. Honest! Just like that rattle the car was making before you took it to the mechanic. Machines, I tell you!

So I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Either way, the saga will surely continue.

Stay tuned.

This rather frustrated post is part of Just Jot it January. Want to join in? Just click here to get to the prompt and drop your link. It’s fun!

Thanks again to Sadje for the prompt!


by 19 Comments

JusJoJan25 the 7th – Pernickety technology

This post is part of Just Jot it January, and the prompt word, “pernickety,” comes to us from Ritu. Check out her blog here!

I tell you, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.

My laptop is dying. The hard drive is gasping out its last laboured breaths. It’s old (in laptop years), it’s reliable, it’s fast (still Windows 10), and I’m reluctant to let it go. I’ll take it to Best Buy today and see if it’s worth replacing the hard drive in it. And the battery because that’s almost gone too. And maybe the fan …

In the meantime, I’m on my newest laptop, a pernickety thing that came with Windows 11 even though I suspect it only just passed the specs to handle it by a whisker.

It’s too slow to do a video chat on Facebook, which I do with a friend every evening while we do writing sprints. It shuts down every once in a while without warning, so writing this post on it is far from ideal. It’s just … okay as a word processor as long as Word is doing auto updates on One Drive.

So yeah.

Wish me luck at Best Buy today. Fingers crossed I won’t have to say goodbye to my old reliable Asus Windows 10 laptop.

This rather ranty post is part of Just Jot it January! Want to join in? Just click here to get to the prompt and drop your link. It’s fun!

Thanks again to Ritu for the prompt!


by 46 Comments

EDDD 13 – Friday the Virus

I was going to title this post with the obvious – Friday the 13th – but the words above more clearly state what my day has been like so far.

I woke up bright and… well, late for me. I’m usually up for the day at 5:30 but His Majesty (my youngest son) allowed me to sleep in ’til 6:30. Anyway, at 6:35 he turned on his laptop to find a virus. Not just any virus it seems, but one which wouldn’t allow me to do anything with the computer but shut it down and re-install Windows.

I don’t understand what the people who write and distribute these horrible worms around the internet get out of doing it. It was one of those ones that, if we can read (His Majesty can’t) we usually know better than to click on unless we’re half asleep or drunk – a pop-up with a badly drawn Windows-like shield, telling the user that the computer is at risk. Yeah, from you, dickhead. I mean seriously, do some people have nothing better to do than sit at their computers and snigger at other people’s misfortune? Ugh!

Anyway, I bought Kaspersky Pure virus protection a few months days ago, so I’ve installed it now on all the computers in the house.

That’ll teach me, eh?

Blog post of December 13th, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out!