One Week Two Laptops Broken
Whenever I find myself in times of trouble, I make an attempt at self-consolation by repairing my travel gear.
I cleaned and mink oiled my boots and vest today.
My two laptops are both broken.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- October 20, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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The first, Old Faithful, my old Dell, was leant to my parents, who wanted a smaller computer to set up in their home instead of their humungous desktop PC. I offered it to them, but it did not last long. A mug of coffee laying within far too close a proximity to the computer was dumped upon the keyboard by my baby sister.
Two traveling laptops broken in one week.
After two years of international travel, after two years of holding up to the rigors of the Road, Old Faithful was fried in the comfort of a highly domestic and static home. The irony almost made me laugh.
"Accidents happen," I told my mother without much real concern. My trusty Asus Eee PC was still running strong.
Not anymore.
For some reason my Eee PC keeps loosing the empty space on its internal hard drive. For the past two weeks I continually deleted programs and have not added anything to it. There should be more than enough space for it to run properly, but the drive keeps filling up on its own. I have gone through the game of deleting programs a half dozen times now, only to have it mysteriously filling back up again. I cannot delete anymore programs, but the hard drive is again full. I do not know why this is happening.
The main problem with this is that as soon as there is no more empty space on the internal hard drive Windows ceases to function properly. In point, my word documents are being permanently scrambled halfway through writing them, none of my remaining programs are working properly, and everything seems to be at the edge of all-out, total collapse.
I called Asus tech support, and, after hearing a string of technical mumble, I was told that the only thing that I can do is a complete system restore. The only problem is that the Asus Eee PCs do not have disk drives and, as I bought my laptop off of the floor of a Best Buy, I never received the restore disk.
The tech support guy lovingly told me that I can purchase the restore disk from Asus for $30, and I have no idea how much an external CD drive costs.
The only thing that I want is a computer that will work properly so that I can attempt to etch out a living publishing this friggin website. But I suppose life would not be interesting if it were not thick with trials, problems, and challenges. "Adventure only happens when things go wrong."
"Life is weird, you should not expect it to be any other way," the anthropologist, Kathleen Modrowski, told me this morning as I began to air my woes.
Another needless hurdle has just been set up for me to plow through like all of the rest.
But, as G says, "Don't feel sorry for yourself."
Two broken laptops in one week.
Bothered, but with freshly oiled boots and vest.
At least my AlphaSmart NEO is still kicking.
Taking the Asus Eee PC to the doctors.
Walking Slow.
Related Pages:
Asus Eee PC Initial Impressions
Asus Eee PC Travel Computer
Don't Buy from Buy.com
Asus Eee PC Popular with Travelers
Links to previous travelogue entries:
Vagabond Journey Mission Statement
Downfall of the Maya
Herman Melville Pilgrimage
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers
Labels: americas, new-york-city, travel-gear, usa
posted by Wade Vagabond Journey.com at
11:46 AM
5 Comments:
Google 'treesize' and find out where the space is going. I'm guessing a virus or some other nasty.
Hey, it sounds like you have a virus of some sort that keeps replicating itself filling up your hard drive. If you havent already, check out AVG it is a free antivirus program.
http://free.avg.com/
When I read this, I was going to recommend both of those things, tree size and avg. i would also recommend AdAware, as it could be spyware. Also, with an eeepc, I highly recommend spending a couple of bucks on some usb flash drives to keep your writing, pictures and other files on.
Also, you may have been able to avoid this by using the Linux version of the eeepc. That comes with other problems though, but if you are just using it for email, blogging, papers and all that, Linux will do it all. The advantage is that it is not prone to windows viruses and spyware.
Thanks to Paul, Steve-O, and General McArthur,
I went through and deleted a whole bunch of temp files and used a program called Crap Cleaner to kick out some more unused files.
This has cleaned up some space, but not as much as I think should have been cleaned, based upon how much I deleted. For now, I am just going to use the computer at half-time by only running one program at a time. I am just going to take it easy for a few days and keep the temp files deleted. Though if this doesn't work I may have some bigger problems.
Thanks for your help!
Walk Slow,
Wade
Wade, sorry to hear of the computer worries. I hope you realize that I wish the best for you. I suppose my roughneck, West Texas upbringing shows through in some of my comments. But I believe it is best for people to develop a sense of resolve and focus on the aspects of life they can control. To understand this better read the book "black swan". Some worrisome stuff, people might need all the resolve and determination they can muster. g.
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Feel free to comment on these posts, ask questions, or give any feedback that you would like. Walk Slow, Wade
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