I was in a rush to leave work.
I had stayed past the time when I promised to leave and was having visions of an irritated Mrs. growing furious because it was my turn to cook dinner.
The problem was – my laptop did not want to go.
We rarely know what our laptops want but sometimes they tell us. When we want to go somewhere and our laptop does not, the screen will flash:
“Please Do Not Power Off or Unplug Your Machine”
What it does not say is “or else” but that is implied.
If you force it to shutdown, all of the things you should have backed up will be lost. All the software you purchased will have to be repurchased. All the music and films you downloaded will now have to be obtained legally.
Turning off your machine is not an option. So you wait. It will not take long, you tell yourself. It is just a windows update.
Wouldn’t it be nice though if Windows was more like a considerate adult and than a petulant child? An adult might say, “This will take about 20 minutes, do you have twenty minutes?” Whereas the child will say, “We do what I want and keep in mind that I have Child Protective Services on speed-dial.”
So you wait.
After a long pause, the screen reads, “Update 1 of 11”.
That’s not so bad….. only 11 updates.
By update #2, you have missed dinner.
By update #3, the yogurt in your refrigerator has expired.
By update #4, your driver’s license renewal is past due.
By update #5, your children retire.
By update #6, the national debt is paid-off.
By update #7, the Second Coming has come and gone.
By update #8, the Third Coming is long forgotten.
By update #9, a new geological age is announced.
By update #10, the planets having spent their orbits, crash one after the other into the sun.
By update #11, an astronomer on a lonely planet in a distant galaxy peers across the universe to observe the death of the Milky-Way. She opens her laptop to inform her husband she will be late for dinner but Windows has seized her machine and her screen reads:
“Please Do Not Power Off or Unplug Your Machine”
HaHaHa! It seems that your list of calamitous events tends to end with the extreme astronomical kind, like the tug of a black hole, or the abovementioned scenarios:
Thank you for visiting my post to contemplate the galactic collision at https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/soundeagles-poetry-with-enigmas-goodbye-milky-way/
Switch to Mac, that will stop. The constant updates annoy my wife to no end!
Yep, no consideration. And it’s made worse when you next switch on and it carries on ‘configuring’ or doing a ‘Windows Update Cleanup’… just when you wanted to start work again.
Mine froze last night mid update. I feared a crash but was forced to pull the plug…
Ouch. That is usually bad news. Hope things are going well this morning
Windows must like me. It usually gives me the option of updating immediately, or within a 24-hour period. When the 24 hours are done, though, it shows no mercy.
I know there is a configuration for that. I just need to spend some time to find it. It’s a new windows 8 machine
Haha. Updates are certainly another in opportune thing we have little choice over.
For which we pay dearly. 🙂
This happens every time I’m running behind to pick up the kids from daycare. The late charges between updates 3 and 7 make my entire work day a wash.
Perhaps your computer is competing for attention. My wife says mine does that all the time.
Amen, Brother. And to add insult to injury, there are at least 3 things that worked BEFORE the update that no longer work!!
But you have to understan, a computer that works is a security risk
Oh, but there is a twelfth update.The Cubs won the World Series.
Or the Vikings won a game
The odds are much more in favor of the Vikings than the Cubs. I predict that the Second Coming will occur when the White Sox and the Cubs play in the World Series and the Cubs win.
See? Your geology training came in handy here!
I was thinking about exactly this the other day – “this” being the fact that Window’s doesn’t alert you to an update’s schedule. It’s kind of important to those of us who take online exams and need to have a responsive and active computer connection. And those of use who have dinner waiting for tardy spouses.
Yes I can see you the next geological Epoc: Windows 9
As I left the coffee shop today I tried to shut down the computer and Windows only gave me two options: Update and restart, Update shut down