BSOD
While I would not be the first to admit it, because I am very happy wallowing in my own misery, there is something worse than BFOS, and that is the BSOD.
Which, unfortunately, I woke to last week.
They do a have a few things in common, the most obvious being they are both a huge pain in the a$$ followed by the 2nd most obvious, you are jumping on a merry-go-round right here and now in a vain attempt to find any solution.
My current vain attempt to find resolution on the Falling Off Butt is a trip to a Neurologist which will happen Tuesday. I don’t want to but have been mercilessly nagged by friends and family for weeks to please make an appointment which I finally, grudgingly did. If he comes within 20 feet of me with a steroid he’d better never plan on having children.
Being my own IT department at Chez Terrilee’s Running Club Secretary’s Top Secret Laboratory, I quickly triaged the situation. Upstairs at one end of the house: The dead or dying laptop. Downstairs at the other end of the house: The still useful desktop.
Here’s a thought: bring the laptop downstairs and try fixing it there, next to the working computer.
But, no, that never, in six hours of running back and forth, occurred to me. First I’d google the most recent error message on the desktop and run upstairs to implement that fix. Then I’d run downstairs to google the next step, run up the stairs, run down the stairs, six hours. The next day I could not figure out why my knees hurt so much. Finally it occurred to me I’d done six hours of a stair workout…in Uggs.
Anyway, eventually I came to the realization that nothing was going to help so I held a pillow firmly over the screen until it quit kicking. Resolutely, sadly, I closed the lid on my laptop for the final time and stuck it in the Closet Of Death. We all have one, the closet where you stick everything you no longer need but have no idea what to do with. I thought I heard a faint whirrrrrr and sigh as I dropped it on top of that ugly quilt someone gave the twins when they were babies. They probably quilted it while watching Top Gun. You can’t really say too much good about color combos of the 80’s, not that I wasn’t extremely grateful for the quilt at the time. Now I just do everything beige. Light Beige, Medium Beige, Beige Beige. It’s boring, but I won’t look at pictures 20 years from now and say, what the h@ll was I thinking? Because everything will be beige including me, and I won’t be able to see anything. The pictures won’t paint a very colorful history of our family, little beige squares stuck in a photo album, but there will also be no evidence of my poor taste, evolving hairstyles and expanding waist.
There’s something else that might be worse than BFOS, and that is the BPOD:
Swim class, or as I like to think of it, Torture, is on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Last week I spent Thursday putting the laptop out of my misery, and this past Tuesday I spent eagerly awaiting the highly touted ice and snow storm. I was less eager than usual because I had not taken time to buy several loaves of white balloon bread, 13 gallons of milk and some firewood being sold by the side of the road out the back of an old red pickup truck to use in our gas fireplace. Fail to plan, plan to fail. The cats glared at me accusingly. “What kind of mom are you?,” I could see them thinking. Meanwhile, the television screamed.
“RIGHT HERE, ONLY ON THE BEST STATION IN TOWN, NEWS CHANNEL ZIPPY, THE LATEST UPDATE ON SNOWMAGEDDON 2013!”
“BOB! TELL US THE LATEST NEWS CHANNEL ZIPPY WEATHER UPDATE ABOUT ICE AND SNOW AND POSSIBLE POWER OUTAGES!”
“WELL, BILL, AS YOU KNOW, HERE AT NEWS CHANNEL ZIPPY WE ARE CAREFULLY WATCHING OUR WEATHER UPDATES WHICH INDICATE ICE AND SNOW AND POSSIBLE POWER OUTAGES!!! STEVE, WHAT CAN YOU TELL US?”
“WELL, BILL & BOB, HERE AT NEWS CHANNEL ZIPPY WE ARE CAREFULLY WATCHING OUR TRAFFIC WEATHER UPDATES, WHICH INDICATE ICE AND SNOW AND POSSIBLE POWER OUTAGES!! IN FACT, SEVERAL CARS HAVE ALREADY WRECKED ON THE FLY-OVER IN JOYFUL ANTICIPATION OF ICE AND SNOW!!”
“WOW, BILL & BOB & STEVE” SOLEMNLY INTONED NEWS CHANNEL ZIPPY ANCHOR SALLY SUE, “WE ARE SO GRATEFUL FOR YOUR DEDICATION TO GETTING OUT ALL THE LATEST NEWS AND WEATHER UPDATES ABOUT SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-MAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGEDON 2013!!!”
I tried to turn off the TV but apparently at the hint of ICE AND SNOW the television becomes sentient and immediately stations itself on NEWS CHANNEL ZIPPY. You can beg and plead but you are not going to see anything other than large words superimposed over photos of last year’s SNOWMAGGENDON 2012 while Bob joyfully exclaims the worst that could possibly happen, so I kept watching, anticipating, ready for the power outage so I could try to rewarm my coffee over my dad’s old Zippo lighter, but nothing happened. No snow. No ice. No power outage. It was like being five and getting clothes for your birthday. And while I watched and anticipated, swim class passed me by. Darn.
Hope your Tuesday appointment nets you some relief… and that you get some relief from the BSOD. ; )
Thanks – I just posted, finally – it was very helpful and the Dr. was great. So now we keep moving forward, and there is going to be a resolution at some point!
Good luck, Miss Athlete.
🙂 Still not planning a tri…
You do know there’s a News Channel Zippy Drinking Game on Ye Olde Interwebs, right? I’m thinking an impending Snomageddon, a couple of MegaMargaronas, our ever-tolerant husbands as DDs and we could have ourselves QUITE a time!
Keeping you in my prayers for the neurodoc appointment.
Hate the Blue Screen of Death; have had that happen to me on more than one occasion; seems the kiss of life doesn’t work though!
Yep, I tried for hours but BSOD is apparently pretty much final and fatal. Thank God BFOS is not, just takes a long time to untangle those threads.