Everything Will Be [Techn(olog)ically] Okay June 28, 2009
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Blogging, Etcetera, Ire, Laughing, Technobabble, The Ether, Words.Tags: Blogging, Dell, Everything Will Be Okay, Hitchhiker's Guide, Marvin, Tech Support, technology, XPS m1330
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I have been a very bad blogger. But with good reason, of course. Here begins the story of a Miraculous Laptop Resurrection.
On the first day, at the first sign of computer malfunction, I made one emergency backup.
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On the second day, I witnessed increasingly psychedelic bouts of computer death. RIP Graphics Card (and therefore, motherboard, into which said graphic card was unfortunately integrated).
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On the third day, I put Marvin away and started what would become several weeks of Using Someone Else’s Laptop (Mother, Work, Friends…).
{ by breadandbuttershop on etsy }
On the fourth day I began procrastinating about repairs. 1 expired warranty + 3 University end-of-semester essays (+ subsequent holidays) = 3 weeks of procrastination. Anticipated interminably long phone queues, futile complaints, ending inevitably in a very expensive motherboard replacement. Not to mention the idea of a Restore-From-Backup, which never quite returns things to normal.
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… [Insert here: Several weeks of frustration. Using a netbook (I advise against them, unless your preferred work speed is "glacial") loaded with Internet Explorer (not recommended, unless you love a good crash... every 5 minutes). Enduring the mundanity of Open Office, and "This is a public computer: please don't remember my password" on the work computers. Missing my pedantic email filing system in Thunderbird, and all my delicious, delicious cookies (NO, not that kind, THIS kind). ]
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The Call to Dell was made on the Thursday, at 4pm. By 4.05pm (including 1 minute of synthesised glockenspiel muzak) I was saying thankyou to the phone operator who had just promised FREE delivery and installation of a FREE replacement motherboard (which will be covered by a 1-year warranty, FREE), hopefully next-day, but by Monday at the latest. Almost. Fell. Off. My. Chair. In. Shock! (I like to think that it was because I mentioned my awareness of the Dell forums showing more than 150 people with the same problem, many out of warranty,who were still able to claim a free replacement.)
And so, on the Friday, Marvin* rose again. Dell Man appeared at my office at midday, as arranged, and with power drill in hand, disassembled my poor machine into a pile of bits and pieces. And lo, by 12.25pm the lappy resurrection was complete! Free of charge, and less than 24 hours after I finally made the rescue call? A miracle! It’s like nothing ever happened. Marvin even set about launching my last-running instance of Firefox and downloading new emails from the server.
{ via FFFFOUND! }
Anyway, if this saga has taught me anything, it’s that Everything Will Be [Techn(olog)ically] Okay. Also, that I have a lot of haphazardly-gathered but accidentally-themed-alike bookmarks stored away on my harddrive…
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* Named after Marvin The Paranoid Android in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: a computer with a brain the size of a planet, but very poor interpersonal skills.
‘Everything will be ok’ is one of those few idioms that have always struck me as almost paradoxical in the interpretation. Let me explore.
By stating that ‘Everything’ will be ok implies the outcomes of all we strive to achieve eventually settle out into a pool of bliss and achievement. In essense, by attaching such a broad scale definition as the subject of the phrase, it almost implies that ‘Nothing’, looking at the situation from the negative, won’t be ok.
This is a fine statement to make, and generally, being the type of person I am, I would run with it, curiously ignorant to the true meaning of the statement. However, doesnt the assumption that ‘Everything’ to be ok, suggest that there is nothing wrong in the first place? If so, how did we get outselves into this mess, where clearly, something [Everything - Single instance of disatisfaction] has gone wrong.
If something can go wrong, doesn’t it suggest that the outcome of ‘Everything’ becoming ok is fallable, because clearly if ‘Everything’ became ok, we wouldn’t have gotten ourselves into this mess. This makes the entire statement incorrect, making one assume that somewhere along the chain of logic, the originator of this phrase did in fact make a mistake.
I know what you ask, hasn’t the misconstruing of this phrase led to the betterment of millions worldwide, as they throw away their fears in search of the hope at the end of the tunnel. Maybe. But is this a false hope?
What I’m trying to say, is that next time you possibly tick the wrong box and order a subsciption to playboy to your grandmother instead of the House & Garden that she was so eager to receive, don’t say to yourself ‘Everything will be ok’. Because it wont. Instead, I propose ‘Some things may or may not turn out in acceptable outcomes over time’, which I think is more fitting for our 21st century lifestyle.
This rant does not apply to this situation, as everything turned out OK. Love the blog.
Fair call, Scooterface. Perhaps I should better expound this as “If you look at everything in perspective, then relatively speaking, one’s relatively minor computer woes will have very little deleterious effect on the grand scheme of life, the universe and everything, ergo, there is no point in dreading a potential consumer service nightmare before even making the first call to tech support”. But then it would not fit on a post-it. x
Just thought I’d tell you that I often come back to this post when I’m having a blue day.
All these images of “everything is going to be ok” make my heart smile. Thankyou for putting them in this adorable little space
Now you have put a smile in my heart too, for the joy of sharing and of having helped you through blue days.
SO glad there was a reason I didn’t just lazily hoard these for my own benefit!