Waiting to Exhale

Picking up the repaired laptop Saturday afternoon at Big Box was a complete reversal to the drop-off experience.

With three Nerd Squad guys on duty, there was no one in line. I walked right up to the counter and was served straight away.

Learned the problem with automatic updates freezing the laptop wasn’t unique to me. Nerd Guy said they’re working on ten laptops with automatic update related problems, some of which are black screens.

I asked about removing updates altogether. He said it’s not encouraged but, under the circumstances, might be best until Windows 10 gets its act together.  After the removal, he cautioned, “They’re off now, but might come back”. Sure enough, later that evening …

Thus far, I’ve been able to circumvent this, but eventually I imagine the updates will circumvent my circumventing.

Sigh!

At least I’ve got a backup laptop to tide me over should things go south again, but now the television is failing. Turn it off at night and it takes 20/30 minutes to power up in the morning before the picture appears on the screen.

It’s been doing that for a while now, but requiring only 10 minutes for the hard drive to power up. Now up to 30 minutes is signaling the TV is on its last leg so, while at Big Box picking up, I ordered a new one, to be delivered and set up on Thursday. Nothing fancy, just a simple no frills easy to operate – or so I requested and was told.

So, though I’ll never buy another computer from Big Box, because of that long wait to check-in for repair, I have no choice but to give them my television business because I can’t get one upstairs on my own and have no confidence I can do a proper setup.

So here I am holding my breath, hoping the updates don't freeze the laptop again, hoping my old TV hangs on until the new one arrives, hoping the new TV gives me no grief, and hoping for an end to technological snafus so I can relax and exhale.

At least the A/C situation has been resolved, even though A/C is not now needed.

The weather was so nice Saturday that, heading to Big Box to pick-up the laptop, I drove the scenic street route. About a block away from the site of the original McDonald’s, now a museum, I saw smoke.

Oh No, thought I. It’s on fire!

The smoke turned out to be a BBQ Pit. A banner indicated it was an event in celebration of the 75^th Anniversary of the fast food chain.

Since it’s McDonalds, I’m assuming it was burgers on the grill.