Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

There are an obnoxious number of cherry trees lining the street along the graveyard. The street is lined with trees that have been attacked with pink at the moment. The grass is littered with pink petals. Walking under the trees today resulted in petals stuck in my hair. I’m torn between being excited by their springtime grandeur and sickened by the concentration of pink. (It’s a lot of pink… at least a half mile. Though there are 2 trees blooming in white to break it up a little.) The trees are very exuberant this time of year.

Computer drama of the week…

Unsurprisingly, I dislike calling IT Help Desks. I would prefer to solve issues myself. Oh, and I have a little too much insight into the mind of an IT support person. The Help Desk at the company I’m currently working for is actually quite good, responsive and clueful, honestly… but that doesn’t make calling them with a randomly freezing laptop any happier. Yesterday morning, my laptop started to freeze up. I gave it a timeout over lunch (off, unplugged, battery out). Sadly, it didn’t magically fix the problem. I did successfully get the presentation I’m currently working on for Friday off the drive before it crashed for the 12th time. I called the Help Desk. The nice support guy thought it might be my hard drive and escalated me (with a very high priority) to an appropriate tech.

The tech timed his call perfectly - calling right after my afternoon meeting. (Doing a meeting blind when you’re supposed to be introducing the ins and outs of a new presentation? Not fun.) He agreed with the hard drive diagnosis (I was still desperately hoping for a video driver issue) and asked how soon I could get it to him. I overnighted it to him and he received it today. Apparently my laptop is toast. Poor little laptop. He thinks he can save my data though, so all is not lost (literally and figuratively). I think I’ll have a new-to-me laptop in my hands by the end of the week. In the meantime I get to limp along with temporary access to my e-mail via a web client that times out every 30 seconds. Irritating, but at least I can still work!

April Stats:

• Flickr: 40 new photos, 300 hits.
• Miscellaney of a Cheshire Cat: 12 new posts, 5458 hits.

tags: cherry blossoms, laptop, pink, spring, statistics, tech support, work