How the laptop misery finally ended for the tech-backward me

I write this blog post after MONTHS. It seems like forever. Apart from the never-ending crunch at work, one of the reasons I have not been blogging motivated to blog much of late is the latest addition to our (my brother’s and mine) tech family—a Dell Latitude (lappy). A friend of mine has the same model and although it’s no high-end Sony Viao, I thought at that time that it was rather cute. Add to this the fact that it’s partly mine—the lappy is special.

Now since this piece of art comes from the US of A, I had to combat the 2-pin versus 3-pin plug problem. So I needed a converter. A friend then told me that these things don’t come cheap and I was beginning to think whether the initial spurt of joy was warranted at all. We then got an inspiration from the unlikeliest of places—the office conference room where a 2-pin plug lappy was connected to a 3-pin plug. So I just needed that lil box called an adapter.

By now, I needed my laptop something fierce because a resourceful friend had just finished downloading Depp movies on request. I always had a gut feeling that my brother got me this lappy because of this cold war surging between the two of us when he got back from work to see me perched at my desk hogging his precious desktop. But then I needed an adapter, the little box available at all hardware stores. What I also needed was time.

So one day the adapter finally arrived; the Depp collection was safely stored in my Transcend external hard disk (which is an absolute beauty); and my lappy was connected! I began my routine of meticulously connecting the accessories to watch my movie in peace, when the brakes came on. Halt. This lappy had only one USB port! And my Transcend external hard disk needed that “extra power” for it to function (yea function, not function properly even). To make matters worse, this laptop has an external hard disk*, which means that the ROM drive is not in-built. And this external hard disk is nowhere in sight. Recalling that my neighbor had a USB hub, I dashed off. Pronto. Poor me with a degree in Microbiology did not know that this would not work because of whatever reasons (who cares!!!). So with a grim expression on my face I returned the darned hub. My friend then tells me that I need some kind of card for this. *groan*

I told you I was far from being a CS person. Predictably, I pulled out my flash drive (which now doubles as an MP3 player occasionally) and began the strenuous task of connecting my Transcend hard disk to my desktop to transfer the movies ONE BY ONE (did I not mention that my MP3 player has a storage capacity of 1 GB?) and then finally to my lappy. At this point I must mention that all of the transferring does not happen at lightening pace either, and it seems like FOREVER when you stand there waiting for the files to fly into the damn folder and see that magical 100%. DONE! I now opened the file, lounging and ready to settle while the initial few names flashed on the screen. But all I got to see was a message saying “CODEC error.” GREAT! I had forgotten that this file wouldn’t play on Windows Media Player. If it was not for Johnny Depp, I would’ve said “to hell with this thing,” but I HAD to watch that movie and I had to watch it now.

So off I went to irritate (understatement of the century; I am resisting the urge to use a stronger word on my blog) my bro while he was contemplating something over a frown while sitting at the desk. “Err…I just need to transfer a few more files and I will be done, I promise.” My brother was still frowning. “You don’t have to get up; just let me know when the transfer’s done.” He let out what sounded like an impatient “tschk,” which I quickly assumed was a disgruntled “ok” and waited patiently for a host of files to get transferred. That done and a couple of plug in sessions and installations later, I opened the file. Johnny Depp! I see him! I see him and hear him! All’s well then.

Tired and happy as hell

This was a month back. Since then, I have been busy watching movies every single day and that, my friends, is why I haven’t been reading your blogs or visiting mine. My Deppathon (Depp marathon, duh) continues. So long!