I just can’t seem to keep out of trouble.
A couple of years ago, I noticed that my laptop was running very slowly and very hot. I took it in to the trusty guys who fix laptops (names concealed for reasons that later will become obvious) and they fixed it. They told me that three things can go wrong to make a laptop overheat and all three had gone wrong on mine. They cleaned it and moved the fan that had become displaced and they replaced a piece of filtering-type material (by now you can tell why I stick to doing therapy and leading tours– a techie I am not!) A few months later when the laptop was again running slow, I had a local person look at it and he found that the automatic windows updates were hanging it up. He turned them off and the computer ran fine.
But a couple of months ago, the laptop once more started running slow. By this time I had gone out and bought an external hard drive and between that and some DVDs I burned, I backed up pretty much everything of value.
So on Sunday I took the laptop in for servicing to the laptop experts (not their real name.) Computer Whiz (not his name) told me that he would let me know what the story was within a day.
Last evening I called him and he told me that he was with a client and would call me back. Meanwhile we took friends of ours out to eat at a nice restaurant here in Modi’in. It’s the kind of place that has home baked laffot (they’re like huge pitot and taste heavenly) and they bring to every table a selection of salads (about 12), a vegetable salad, rice, french fries, humus, and whatever meat you order. We all decided on skewers of “pargiot” which are very tender pieces of chicken. I had taken my first taste of a piece of a laffa (the bread) when the phone rang.
It was the Wizard. He said he had three things to tell me. The first was that my laptop was terminally ill. It seems that from the color of the monitor when it boots up, he can tell that the monitor will soon die. Replacing the monitor on an almost 5 year old laptop is probably not worth it. I knew that all of my data and pictures and writings were backed up, but I suddenly realized that I would have to download the abominable printer driver once again. I was barely absorbing this crushing blow when he got to the second item on his list. He told me that he could run the spyware check, but that he thought it was unnecessary given that I could do it myself. “OK,” I thought, “now for the reason I brought in the computer…”
At this point, his generally kind voice turned into that of a very frustrated drill sergeant trying to explain to the new recruit for the 1000th time not to point the loaded weapon at his buddy.
He said, “I know that I am younger than you are, but I have to reprimand you.”
“OK,” I said.
“You eat at the computer.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Your computer was filthy.”
“OK”
“No, NOT OK; your computer was filthy. There were crumbs and dirt everywhere.”
“OK, I understand.”
“No, you don’t. I had to use a shovel to get all of the dirt out.”
“OK” (at this point I was beginning to think that he was just a bit over-the-top)
“NO, It’s NOT OK. You can’t eat at the computer.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Did I tell you I needed a shovel to get all of the dirt out of your computer?”
“I think you mentioned that.”
“So you had better not eat over the computer.”
Now here is where I made my mistake… I think he was winding down and I almost was finished with my reprimand when I somehow decided to offer:
“I actually went out and bought a silicon keyboard that I attach to the laptop. It’s washable.” (I didn’t add that you can even submerge it in water.)
He was not pleased. He didn’t think that I was showing sufficient respect for my laptop. He said:
“You still need not to eat at your computer.”
“OK.”
“Did I mention that I needed a shovel to get all of the dirt out of it?”
“I think you did.”
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So here’s the question: Do you think the Wizard has put me on the laptop blacklist? When the monitor dies, will I be able to buy a laptop anywhere in Israel?
Stay tuned.