Two
nights ago as I collapsed in my room and prepared for another hour or two of
finals study, I pulled out my laptop and the couple cords needed to keep it
running and set everything up. Having used my laptop - a charcoal Toshiba
Satellite aged 2 years—for several hours that day without the plug, I needed
the thing to run off its power cord—a simple enough request, I thought.
Now my laptop and I haven’t always gotten along. It went through a
temperamental phase in which it refused to play any ethnic music - Japanese,
Chinese, Russian, French, whatever. No ethnic music, despite my having
purchased half of it in America. After a few months it relented and allowed
Chinese, French, and the occasional Japanese song. Nothing Russian would be
tolerated. Then there was the Windows Media Player tantrum. Having compromised
so much in the foreign music department, the laptop decided not to support
Windows Media Player. At all. That was avoided easily enough with the
availability of itunes, which I promptly downloaded and put to good use.
This appeared to be a below-the-belt hit to the laptop, who retaliated by “losing”
all my media files. Any attempt to play any music or video procured a smug “Cannot
find file. Would you like to search for it yourself?” message. No, I would not
like to search for it myself. Even if I find it you’ll say it isn’t really
found, and I don’t have time to argue reality with a computer.
The quarrels died down for a bit and we had been enjoying a friendly truce
until it came to finals week. A power cord is a simple thing. You plug one end
into the electrical outlet and the other end into your laptop, with about six
feet of cord and an electric box in between. The laptop itself displays a
battery icon on your taskbar whenever it’s using battery life, and there are
lights on the outer edge of the laptop that shine when the laptop is plugged in
and charging. Simple, yes? Not if the power cord decides life is not worth
living for.
On the night aforementioned, I had plugged everything in and was settling down
comfortably in my room when I noticed two things. First, the lights on my
laptop told me the battery was not receiving the electric charge, thereby
making it impossible for me to work on the paper I needed finished. Second,
somewhere in my room one of my many dead watches had miraculously been
resurrected and was ticking merrily away.
I love the sound of watches ticking; I’m not sure why. Perhaps because it’s
rhythmic and soothing; perhaps because I’m OCD and like to know that time is
passing; perhaps I’m just insane. However! When it’s one in the morning and I
have papers to write and my laptop refuses - refuses!! - to cooperate, ticking
is not a good thing. I meddled with the laptop for twenty minutes without
gaining any ground whatsoever. By now the ticking had gotten inside my head and
was making my left eyelid twitch (get this) in rhythm with the watch. Tick,
twitch, tick, twitch, tick, twitch, tick, twitch. ENOUGH! I was determined to
find the watch and manually and, if need be, forcefully remove its life-source.
Simple, yes? Not if the watch in question is non-existent.
I searched. High, low, mid, behind, under. Anywhere possible, anywhere
thinkable, anywhere physically accessible I searched. The watch was either
bewitched or a figment of my imagination. I spent twice as long looking for the
ticking as I had on doing CPR on my power cord. For the sake of keeping track,
I started at one in the morning and now having spent twenty minutes trying to
coax life into my laptop and another forty minutes searching for the mystery
watch, I was now at two in the morning without having accomplished anything. I
know when I have suffered a defeat, and I, rather ungraciously, retired from
the field of battle. I snapped the laptop shut, turned off the lights, and let
the muffled ticking lull me to sleep.
The following morning I was delighted to wake to a silent room. I packed my
dead laptop and its useless cords in my bag and went off to school. Once in one
of the secluded study rooms I attempted again to plug in my laptop hoping that
a change of scenery and different electricity would induce it to be sociable.
Sociable it was not. Friendly it was not. Functioning it definitely was not.
However, TICKING it certainly and unmistakably WAS. The electric box that joins
the two lengths of cord between the outlet and the laptop was ticking. Ticking.
I twitched.
And with that I snapped the lid on my laptop and on my two-page final
presentation paper and went to work. I have since taken the ticking power cord
to Best Buy where I was informed that the power cord wasn’t working properly (I
wondered how much Geek Squaders got paid and how much training they went
through) and that a new one would be shipped to my home address in three to
five days. No, that won’t work. My final is due tomorrow. Well, I was quickly
informed, that’s not a problem one hundred eleven dollars and fifteen cents won’t
take care of. Simply purchase a universal power cord and return it when mine
was shipped to my house. One hundred and eleven dollars and fifteen cents later
I left Best Buy.
And yes, I was twitching.
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