Smile-breaks
Laptop Joins Bears in Hibernation
I was tootling along, minding my business, when it happened. I guess I should have expected it. After all, it’s winter. Not with the snow and all that – not in Southern Cal. But the days are short and the skies are gray – sometimes.
I forget what I was in the middle of, but it was Important. I know because everything I do on my computer is Important and can’t be Lost or I will be in Terrible Trouble. And I do know I was in the middle of Work. I wasn’t like I was frittering away my time checking out IRS websites.
The message flashed on the screen just long enough for me to read it before the screen went black. “I’m going to hibernate.” The screen went so completely black I thought maybe it was I who had gone into hibernation.
Seconds passed before I spotted the tiny orange light blinking conspiratorially at me from the front of the keyboard. It was the only sign of life in the room.
Encouraged, I pressed Control Alt Delete. Nothing happened. I tried again. Control Alt Delete. Nothing happened. I wasn’t surprised.
Well, I wasn’t getting anywhere this way, so I shut off the power button. Nothing happened. It was hibernating, too. Everything was hibernating. Except for the orange light…
Wait - what happened to the orange light? Gone. I turned on the computer. Nothing happened. No orange light. And then I thought I saw it flicker once more.
But still nothing happened, so I gave up and went off to my cave. Didn’t stay long. Not into hibernating. Decided to go to lunch instead. Figured the computer would be done hibernating by the time I got back and I’d turn it on and everything would be Normal again and I could get my Work done.
An hour later the thing still wouldn’t turn on. Or off.
This called for desperate action so I called The Computer Tech. Told him what happened. He didn’t skip a beat.
“It’s hibernating,” he said.
“What do you mean - hibernating?”
“It’s like bears do, you know. When winter comes, they go off to the cave and…”
“I know all about that. What’s my computer doing?”
“It’s hibernating.”
We weren’t getting anywhere. I cut to the bottom line.
“How do I get it to stop?”
He said the first thing to do would be to check the connections. (They always say that. They get paid a lot to say that. It kills time while they think what to say next.)
Ohmigosh! The connections! They’re not. Connected. It’s a laptop and I plugged in the DSL cable and I plugged in the USB cable but I never plugged in the power cable so the battery was running low and the computer didn’t want to forget all that stuff I’d just told it, so it went off and Hibernated. Of course! Wouldn’t you?
My old laptop never hibernated. It just screamed “beep beep beep” when the power was running low and told me to quick save my files before it zonked and I always saved the files and shut off the computer before it had a chance to – um, hibernate. We never got that far, my old laptop ’n me.
But I understand what hibernation’s all about now. It’s when the bears go off to the woods to sleep away the winter and my computer goes into a deep snooze that can only be awakened by the poke of a three-pronged power cord in its belly.
I also understand that hibernation is a word you should know, in the technical sense, before you call the computer tech guy, who will give you a lot of grief over the meaning of a word that even Southern Californians are expected to recognize by the time they reach adolescence.
And last of all, I understand now why I get so frustrated with my laptop. As I suspected, it’s a bear.