You know how it's said that you never realize how much you really miss someone until he or she is gone? Or that we often fall into the habit of taking things for granted until the day they're really gone?
It's true, you know.
It's really true.
We tend to take stuff for granted sometimes. Like we assume that things will always work, that things will always be there, that there will be no anomalies or that everything will go sailing smooth as they have always done because they have always done. And it doesn't cover only the big ticket stuff like jewelry or a car or a house. Neither does it cover people around us, like acquaintances, friends and loved ones.
It also covers stuff normalized and regular too.
Like a computer keyboard, or in my case, a laptop keyboard.
It happened last weekend. Rather, it happened on a Monday, the first day of a work week, the very day that I was planning to email an important document and which needed some sort of brief, but I think it must have been happening over the weekend.
What and why it happened, I don't know, but Monday morning I opened my laptop, tried banging in my password, and nothing happened. I thought it was just a key or two, cos' it had happened before, and so I updated the driver software (again!) and restarted the laptop and you know, it should work, right, since it worked the last time.
Nope, not this time round. I restarted the laptop twice over and then when I realized that even the Caps Lock and Enter keys weren't working, not to mention anything else, like the Ctrl or the F buttons of the Escape button or even the up and down arrows, I knew it was a goner. Complete goner.
I was stuck with a laptop that wouldn't let me type.
I was stuck with a laptop that had the mouse and touchpad functioning but not the keyboard, and although there was the onscreen keyboard, how in the high heavens was I going to read and reply to emails and write articles and send the necessary docs? How was I going to do anything?
I started wondering why, asking myself some of the weird questions that pop up whenever you're faced with a non-functioning technological piece of gear. What did I do over the weekend? Where did I plug it in? Was it because I charged my phone with the USB port? Was it because I'd been upgrading the keyboard drivers again and again and somewhere along the way I clicked the wrong thing? Was I not supposed to update the keyboard drivers this way?
Questions that brought no answers.
Questions that made me wonder whether I'd been doing the right thing and made me wish I had asked before jumping in to try rescue the problem.
For a non-tech person who mixes up her ports sometimes, having a keyboard go kaput on you is a very shocking, scary thing. I mean, it is not just a key or two. It's not a key that holds a function to which you don't usually use. It is the d*** CapsLk. The Shift. The Enter. The Ctrl. The Esc. The Spacebar.
I nearly wept.
What was I going to do without my keyboard? How was I going to blog, to email, to type, to do everything? How was I going to function? What was I going to do in the interim? Did I need to get a new keyboard altogether? Did I need to buy another new laptop altogether? Should I buy a wireless keyboard from Miniso and then bring it around wherever I went? What was I supposed to do? What could I do?
I googled. I tried some of the solutions. I flipped between Google Chrome on my phone and trying to figure out the problem.
Nothing worked.
So I asked someone instead and well, let's say that the technique of resetting the entire system worked. And that I had to transfer out all my data and wait for two days armed with pen and paper and notebook whilst my laptop underwent some sort of emergency triage, diagnostics, repair and recovery.
It's going well now.
I'm typing this from the laptop. :)
Should I say that I'm glad for what happened? Of course not.
But it having happened, it having taken place, I suppose there are lessons to be learnt. Lessons that involve a heck lot of Consciousness where you suddenly become aware of stuff that you weren't aware of before. Lessons that you keep with you for a few days after as you delicately rearrange all your settings and stay thankful each time they work.
You learn about behavior modification.
Like how automatically your fingers move over to the Shift button and the Enter button and the Spacebar button, completely forgetting that it was asleep when you're transferring the data.
Or how familiar you've become with all the keys even without thinking about it.
You learn about yourself. You learn to acknowledge and recognize and accept what you love, and what you really love.
Like how badly I loved typing and missed it like crazy, how terribly I missed writing on blogs and elsewhere and getting to reply to emails, and how much I really wanted to feel the keys depress beneath the touch of my fingertips all over again.
It's true, you know.
It's really true.
We tend to take stuff for granted sometimes. Like we assume that things will always work, that things will always be there, that there will be no anomalies or that everything will go sailing smooth as they have always done because they have always done. And it doesn't cover only the big ticket stuff like jewelry or a car or a house. Neither does it cover people around us, like acquaintances, friends and loved ones.
It also covers stuff normalized and regular too.
Like a computer keyboard, or in my case, a laptop keyboard.
It happened last weekend. Rather, it happened on a Monday, the first day of a work week, the very day that I was planning to email an important document and which needed some sort of brief, but I think it must have been happening over the weekend.
What and why it happened, I don't know, but Monday morning I opened my laptop, tried banging in my password, and nothing happened. I thought it was just a key or two, cos' it had happened before, and so I updated the driver software (again!) and restarted the laptop and you know, it should work, right, since it worked the last time.
Nope, not this time round. I restarted the laptop twice over and then when I realized that even the Caps Lock and Enter keys weren't working, not to mention anything else, like the Ctrl or the F buttons of the Escape button or even the up and down arrows, I knew it was a goner. Complete goner.
I was stuck with a laptop that wouldn't let me type.
I was stuck with a laptop that had the mouse and touchpad functioning but not the keyboard, and although there was the onscreen keyboard, how in the high heavens was I going to read and reply to emails and write articles and send the necessary docs? How was I going to do anything?
I started wondering why, asking myself some of the weird questions that pop up whenever you're faced with a non-functioning technological piece of gear. What did I do over the weekend? Where did I plug it in? Was it because I charged my phone with the USB port? Was it because I'd been upgrading the keyboard drivers again and again and somewhere along the way I clicked the wrong thing? Was I not supposed to update the keyboard drivers this way?
Questions that brought no answers.
Questions that made me wonder whether I'd been doing the right thing and made me wish I had asked before jumping in to try rescue the problem.
For a non-tech person who mixes up her ports sometimes, having a keyboard go kaput on you is a very shocking, scary thing. I mean, it is not just a key or two. It's not a key that holds a function to which you don't usually use. It is the d*** CapsLk. The Shift. The Enter. The Ctrl. The Esc. The Spacebar.
I nearly wept.
What was I going to do without my keyboard? How was I going to blog, to email, to type, to do everything? How was I going to function? What was I going to do in the interim? Did I need to get a new keyboard altogether? Did I need to buy another new laptop altogether? Should I buy a wireless keyboard from Miniso and then bring it around wherever I went? What was I supposed to do? What could I do?
I googled. I tried some of the solutions. I flipped between Google Chrome on my phone and trying to figure out the problem.
Nothing worked.
So I asked someone instead and well, let's say that the technique of resetting the entire system worked. And that I had to transfer out all my data and wait for two days armed with pen and paper and notebook whilst my laptop underwent some sort of emergency triage, diagnostics, repair and recovery.
It's going well now.
I'm typing this from the laptop. :)
Should I say that I'm glad for what happened? Of course not.
But it having happened, it having taken place, I suppose there are lessons to be learnt. Lessons that involve a heck lot of Consciousness where you suddenly become aware of stuff that you weren't aware of before. Lessons that you keep with you for a few days after as you delicately rearrange all your settings and stay thankful each time they work.
You learn about behavior modification.
Like how automatically your fingers move over to the Shift button and the Enter button and the Spacebar button, completely forgetting that it was asleep when you're transferring the data.
Or how familiar you've become with all the keys even without thinking about it.
You learn about yourself. You learn to acknowledge and recognize and accept what you love, and what you really love.
Like how badly I loved typing and missed it like crazy, how terribly I missed writing on blogs and elsewhere and getting to reply to emails, and how much I really wanted to feel the keys depress beneath the touch of my fingertips all over again.