Techie Triumphant!!!

Okay, I wasn't going to mention it, but I'm so proud of my tech-savvy that I had to share immediately.

I fixed my laptop today. Without even calling the Apple hotline for help.

**waits for applause**

(Those who know the author well stare in astonishment.)

The post title is a lie. I am not a techie. My whole love affair with Apple happened, because I am not good with computers. Steve Jobs and his crew are just so good about making it user-friendly - and mostly Shelby-proof.

So, you can imagine my surprise and dismay when my computer started freezing up this morning before I had even finished one cup of coffee. Especially after my recent BlackBerry difficulties. This laptop is just over a year old, and its predecessor lasted nearly five years. (I know, I know. You're seeing a pattern. I do like to keep my devices around for a long while. You should've seen the brick - ahem, 3rd generation - iPod I once lugged around.) This laptop wasn't due to have difficulties for at least another year or two. I was sure that I had a virus, because in a moment of 90's nostalgia yesterday, I downloaded this song from an unknown website:



Oh, the evil lurking in love ballads from ancient animated films. Who knew? :'(

I had another reason for getting nervous. Montana doesn't have an Apple store. My Apple Care package wouldn't mean anything to the computer experts out here.

Then I tried the old fail-safe - rebooting. My computer froze again, right before shutting down.

I kept calm. I unplugged the laptop and waited for the battery to die. I tried not to resent the fact that the MacBook has a really good battery. I finished one book and started another in the time it took to lose power and shut down.

Once I plugged it back in and turned it on, my laptop seemed to be working fine. Just to be safe, I decided to download a free anti-virus scanner from the internet.

Bad idea! Bad! The computer didn't like this. Just as I dragged the new antivirus software into my Applications folder, it froze again.

I froze too. It had to be a virus. Nothing else was wrong with it. My hard drive had 153.7 MB left. That was plenty of-- Wait a minute. It was supposed to have like, gigabytes. Wasn't a megabyte smaller than a gigabyte?

(Go ahead. Laugh if you want. I told you I wasn't a techie. I actually had to doublecheck GB vs. MB on wikipedia. :-/)

So, once my cursor decided to move, I clicked around and deleted all the contents of my Downloads folder, which had become epicly engorged. And also a couple slideshow videos for good measure.

I can proudly say that I have 182.6 GB of space available. And no further problems....so far.

Shall sign off now to go backup all my files. :-o