Okay, I’m back. I’ve been unable to journal the last few days due to circumstances I shall now relate.
My laptop is slow. Always has been. I bought a very cheap version, foolishly thinking that since I was mostly just using it for word processing and email, I hardly needed massive computing power. The problem with this reasoning, of course, is that you need a computer approximately 1,000 times as powerful as the ones we used to go to the moon just to run Windows. If I turn my computer off, it takes half an hour for it to boot again. Microsoft Word crashes (locking up my system) every single time I try to close it, even if I haven’t even edited a document. Often, my computer will randomly go off into flights of chugging reverie during which I can do nothing and that are so protracted I almost expect it to come back with the answer to life, the universe, and everything. This has seriously impacted my productivity. I break into a cold sweat at the prospect of having to open Microsoft Word, and I’m sure I’ve spent a solid month of my life just watching it dither.
Back around Easter, my cousin attempted to help speed up my computer by somehow telling it not to load so much stuff during startup. Unfortunately, somehow this included not loading whatever drivers are necessary to interact with secure servers, so I could no longer buy stuff through Amazon, Audible, or iTunes, or sign into various websites associated with grad school. My cousin then denied that he had done anything, and I had no idea how to fix it. I managed to limp along, but really needed to get it fixed. I finally saw my cousin again at his sister’s college graduation party, and I told him that if he didn’t fix it, I was going to try smacking my laptop repeatedly against his forehead and see if that did the trick. He did something, and everything seemed to be working again, but when I got home I discovered that now livejournal had stopped working.
So I figured out how to fix that, but I’ve still had it with this computer. To add to my woes, a certain key just stopped working. I’d tell you what it is, but I can’t type it. Well here, I’ll give you a hint, it’s between the 5 and the 7.