If my laptop at home were a person and had a face, I would have punched it days ago.
We are in a fight.
Basically, I want it to work as it has for the last two-and-a-half years, and it just wants to play with ColorWheel.
I HATE ColorWheel! It's been my constant companion for most of the last WEEK!
Last Thursday, I videotaped the last dress rehearsal of my show (it's legal because the script's in public domain and it wasn't an official performance anyway). I forgot how long it takes to download a video of 2+ hours. Unfortunately, it takes about 2+ hours, and I didn't want to stay up until 2 a.m. Thursday night. So, I let my computer download until its usual time for shutting off (you know, to save power).
Well, when I woke up the next morning and rebooted the machine, ColorWheel had appeared. I didn't worry, because I figured the machine needed to reorient itself. I went to work... went to a show... came home after midnight and turned the machine on again... and ColorWheel was still there, which I took to mean that it was still downloading the video (even though the countdown on the downloader wasn't ticking down). I stayed up with it until 2 a.m. but didn't see much of a change, so, again, I went to bed.
Saturday morning, first thing, I turned on the computer, and saw that the video had failed to download. There wasn't enough memory on the machine!! I spent the bulk of the day finding my external hard drive, backing up ALL of my files, and deleting a ton of photos and videos and other things while I listened to General Conference on the radio (that's what happens when you don't have cable t.v. and your computer won't cooperate -- hooray for reliable old-school media!). I tried downloading the video again, and at least when it failed the second time it happened fairly quickly.
Sunday was spent much the same way: deleting already backed-up videos and photos I thought I could live without. Then I tried to upload the video for the third time -- this time I succeeded!! Hallelujah!
Finally, everything seemed to be fine. I watched the first act of my show, caught up on some other t.v.... life as usual.
And then Monday happened. I booted up my computer, but anytime I tried to do anything my old pal ColorWheel would show up for awhile. Any video I watched on Hulu would take forever to load, show 15 seconds, and then fail.
So, I did what any rational, slightly clueless person would do.
I restarted the machine.
BIG MISTAKE!!!!!
It took 2 days to reboot. TWO DAYS! And it didn't shut down to save energy because technically it wasn't even on.
Monday night I started yelling at Mac. A lot.
Last night it finally booted up -- I was so relieved!! I deleted a ton of stuff from iTunes and then emptied my Trash can. Then I tried to watch an episode of Smash. It didn't even get through the "what you've missed" section before a pop-up appeared to tell me I'm out of "application space" and had to shut down a few programs (that pop-up is the other bane of my existence). I closed down iTunes but left Safari up so I could try to keep watching the video.
ColorWheel has been eating up my screen ever since.
Any advice? I bought it in September of 2009. Is it just old? It has been getting slower and slower the last few months. At this point, I'd fear it has a virus, but it's a Mac computer, and aren't viruses on those pretty rare?
3 comments:
Don't be angry baby. It's just a harmless little machine trying to do his job.
I know, you're right. I'm afraid to shut it down, and ColorWheel still gives me anxiety, but it's working for now and I'm grateful.
Have you ever bought a new battery for it? That may be the issue is that your battery is old and you need a new rechargeable battery, there life span is about the amount of time that you've had the computer. It all depends on how often you've charged it and if you ever fully charge it from almost dead.
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