How to survive a Bad Computer Week

One of my cats, Felicity Sophia, has a habit of sitting on my desk, preferably on my keyboard, and extending her claws into my head to get my attention. It works. I really could have done without it today, on a day which started off with no answer to the first three calls I made to my usual computer fixer guy. I have one reasonably good laptop, and a mini laptop for travelling. The reasonably good laptop was working okay until Saturday morning, when it slowed from a brisk trot, to a sedate walk, to a let’s call the ambulance pace. Having been here before, I did the usual: ran a quick scan – which took four hours. Deleted cookies, then made hot chocolate and ate cookies when that didn’t work. Tried to do a belated back up, having done the last one a month ago. Uh oh. I knew I was in serious trouble when it told me it would take four hours to copy one folder. So I was relieved to have a back up computer, right? Wrong. Whether it is a planetary alignment, satellites overhead, fairies with leylines or just bad luck, the mini laptop has also slowed to a crawl. Sometimes I can fail to see what is in front of me, but even I am getting the message: I have angered the technology gods. I am now downing tools, switching off the computer before it blows up, going for a walk around the block, having yet more hot chocolate and non-internet cookies when I come back, and settling down with Felicity Sophia on my knee to watch Gibbs in NCIS. I surrender to my fate, and will take up the cudgels again tomorrow.