Crash…No More?
TL/DR: I think I fixed my laptop crashing issue. The power brick was the culprit.
A little more:
My Dell laptop computer is less than a year old. Windows 11 is the OS.
Tabs, browsers, and even the OS frequently crash on me, disrupting thinking, writing, typing. I’d end up clenching my jaw and swearing on so many days. I had to remind myself to save, save, save work lest I lose it from a crash.
Gmail was the worse but only marginally so over SFGate, BlueSky, Canvas, Facebook, Amazon, the NY Times, Daily Kos, financial sites, ESPN, and WordPress. The crashing also took down Word. It happened with every search engine I tried, and every app I used.
The net crashes happened in every browser. I tried incognito, private, and stealth modes. Same results. I turned off ad-blockers, encryption, VPNs, firewall, anti-virus.
Things still crashed.
I ran diagnostics. Chip test and ram tests. Keyboard, processors, etc.
No problems found.
Researching, I disabled all extensions. Cleared and cleaned caches. Disabled graphic accelerators. Close, opened, shut down, rebooted…uninstalled drivers, reinstalled drivers, perused forums, reached out to Dell, Microsoft, Firefox, Google…more. I closed tabs and kept fewer tabs open. The crashing continued.
Meanwhile, I took my laptop to the coffee shop. I often wasn’t plugging in there and realized, I never crashed there while I wasn’t plugged in.
Yesterday, I went back home and recharged my laptop. Booting up with the laptop plugged in, I opened a browser. Went to NYTimes since it’s a known crasher.
Crash.
I unplugged.
Completely stable. I opened all known offenders.
None crashed. I opened ten tabs, eleven, twelve.
Nothing crashed.
Plugged in the power supply.
Crash, crash, crash.
Unplugged again and operated the rest of the day without any crashes.
I thought, maybe it’s the house wiring or my network. Then I remembered: I was on vacation last week. Stayed in two different hotels and crashed there. So — not my home setup or environment.
I’ve ordered a new brick. It’ll be here next week.
We’ll see how it goes. I’ll let you know.
Awesome! Jolly! Monday!
Jill Dennison has done it again on Jolly Monday!
I listed my favorite five below. Hope you go check out the rest!
Yes, that was seven.
It’s Trump math.
Logging In
I had to go ‘incognito mode’ and log into Gmail. Don’t ask.
I give it my identification. My password.
Okay, my computer tells me. “Go to you phone and click on the link texted to you so we know it’s you.”
I did so.
The computer showed me three numbers in circles. “Now,” it said, “click on the number that corresponds with the number shown on your phone.”
I did so.
“Now,” the computer said. “Hop up and down on your left foot three times and bow to your right.”
I did so.
“Now,” the computer said, “Say Rumpelstiltskin is my name.”
I did so.
I was finally able to log in.
Seriously, I did it all until the hopping part. But I don’t think that’s too far off in the future.
At the Goodwill
My wife and I are on the Oregon coast. We ate a wonderful fresh breakfast at the Fresh Harvest Cafe. Then we hit the local Goodwill.
My wife enjoys visiting Goodwill stores. She likes bargains and she likes re-using things. She did say today, “I’m not buying anything new. I’m death cleaning so whenever I see something I want, I just tell myself, ‘You’ll just have to throw it out.'” Books are the exceptions. We bought four, two for each of us.
Killing time, I wander the store and write a short story in my head. It’s about a future Goodwill. Dystopian situation. A guy ransacks an unused house. There’s a lot of them. Finding a cache of shot glasses, he brings them to the Goodwill. They give him a small bag of peanuts for them. He sits outside in the sunshine, savoring every nut as he eats them.
My sister texted me about her grandson’s birthday. He’s already fifteen, thoroughly discombobulating my brain, which still thinks of him as much younger. His mother is still a teenager in my thoughts. To see that he’s now a teenager is too much. I do the slow math; I was fifty-five when he was born. Time, you know?
Sis tells me that her grandson went to an Escape Room for his birthday. Muses gather in my head to conceptualize fiction about Escape Rooms.
Sis interrupts with a text abut Mom. She’s taken Mom to Urgent Care for another suspected UTI. Mom complains about dizziness as she Mom gets in and out of her wheelchair and the car.
Browsing Goodwill shelves, I see things which might be in my home. I go through an aisle of tools and imagine my tools in there.
I believe I have seen the future.
Leaving the building, I breath in fresh air and smile at the sunshine on my face.
Michael Seidel, writer 