DEAD COMPUTER PROBLEMS LIVE ON

 We had telephoned about my dead computer Tuesday afternoon, eastern US time.  The box to send the computer to them was to come 2 day UPS.  The company is located in California, so it was even earlier in the day there when I was told it would be sent so I expected it to be here on Thursday - 2 days later.  The weather here was a rather nasty on Thursday - raining and windy due to Hurricane Zeta down south.   I have mentioned (ad nauseam) that we have problems with delivery of items by every carrier ever used.  We kept looking out of the front door and windows for the box - hopefully it would left on our steps, but often packages are left at the foot of our (short) driveway next to the sidewalk -nothing there.  As the day grew later we became more concerned that perhaps it had been left and had blown away so I telephoned the warranty company and got the tracking number (which I had expected them to email to us when the package went out).  The box was enroute through the worst of the area Delta was coming through and would be here on Friday - it was still rather close to where it had started its trip.  Taking a chance that the box would be left on our front steps rather at then at the foot of the driveway and knowing the remnants of Delta would be coming through our area all day Friday we left a large note on the inside of the glass storm door asking that it be left inside our side door (on a small porch) with arrows showing where we meant.  I checked when we woke and dressed on Friday -nothing in front of door, in porch or on driveway (as far as we could see) - if the box was left outside it would drenched and unusable.  When we went to cook dinner we found the box in the side porch (I had the curtain on the window next to my desk open the entire we were in the office and had not seen it delivered).  At least it was finally here and dry. 

We had hoped to turn it around and send it back by Friday - first as we wanted it back as soon as possible and also because the return shipping label had time limit - but that was not to be.   When I had set up the claim I was told I could not call for pickup and had to bring it into UPS - I had asked as we REALLY did not want to go out for this (or basically anything) and I explained that to the employee.  Since these days we don’t normally open “mail” until 4 days later we did not rush to open the box as it would not be going out until Monday anyway, the first time it could be sent.  When we opened it Sunday night to pack the laptop it said we could call for pickup - oh, well, that would delay it another day.  We packed it up - we made 2 plastic tape labels for the computer and two for the cord - one label on each had our names and the other had the case number we were given - if the computer and/or cord was separated from the paperwork we wanted to make sure it would be obvious whose they were.  We were extremely concerned about going to UPS - last time we had to deal with something there the place was wall to wall to people waiting and took hours - not a situation we want to be in right now.  Luckily it was empty when we went there.  We checked today (Wednesday) and the computer is still enroute.  Hopefully they will actually have it tomorrow.

I still cannot sign into the newspaper to read it on my laptop.  I can sign in my desktop and husband can sign in on his cell phone (latter done as a test as he does not read the newspaper and gets annoyed when I read him “tidbits” from it - he is a TV news person.  We figured perhaps the problem is that this laptop is Windows XP, so husband brought down and tried to sign into his Win 10 laptop and could not sign into the newspaper either.  Makes no sense to us.  I am reading the newspaper on my desktop when I have a chance during the day. 

My embroidery club has been holding its meetings online - show what one has made (yes, show and tell) discuss business - such as needing a larger room to meet in next time we meet in person so we can space out, etc.  I had forgotten that the meeting was today until I heard from the group president.  After I heard from her I was going to use husband’s desktop computer (mine has no microphone, speakers or camera - it was custom built for me by husband and other than Zoom meetings, which were unheard of by us until Covid-19 stay at home started, have no use for them.  But as I was using my little, old laptop I noticed it had a camera and a symbol for microphone, so making sure that they both turned on I planned to use my laptop for the meeting this morning.  Husband showed me where to plug in his microphone and camera on his desktop - just in case.

I woke up this morning, dressed and turned on my little laptop.  It worked!  I signed into the Zoom site and got into the meeting and saw everyone - m o v i n g  v e r y   s l o w l y - okay, I can deal with that.  I said hello.  I then realized that I could not hear them - something was wrong with the speakers.  (Husband later reminded me when I told him of my adventure that I keep my speakers in my laptops on mute - oops, my fault.)  So I plugged in his camera and his microphone and turned on his desktop computer.  I then had to sign into my email address to get the invitation to the meeting - an email address which is not in his computer (I checked in case it was).  I put in my email address on the appropriate page and entered my password as I remembered it.  Nope.  Tried again.  Nope.  I then turned on my desktop (so at this point I now have 3 computers turned on trying to sign into Zoom and join the meeting) to get the password as it shows there - I had the correct password.  Time kept passing. We get a 40 minute free session from Zoom, sometimes extra minutes are given - I looked at the clock and the 40 minutes had run out.  So I shut everything down and went back to bed.  I later sent an email to the group explaining what had happened.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK-

Make sure you have good lists of current usernames and passwords.  If you are going to use a device or a feature of your computer (or any other electronic device) when time will be of the essence to use it - and you don’t want to look like an idiot that doesn’t know what you are doing (especially since they consider me the computer “expert”) make sure you do a trial run before you actually need to use that feature or device to make sure it is working , turned on and that you know what you are doing.   As we go along with the Covid-19 situation we are using computers and other devices differently than normal and may need a bit of practice doing so.  Yeah, I had thought of doing a quick Zoom session with husband to make sure the laptop would work and run fast enough - but never did get around to it.

I hope that all who have been in the path of Hurricane Zeta and their families and friends are safe and well and the same to those in the paths of the various fires and other weather problems.