I had a bit of a wacky, muprhy’s law kind of afternoon. Ever have one of those days where, all in all, things go pretty normally, but for like a half an hour, all the wheels come off? It was kind of one of those.
I had a pretty productive morning, and then had a Zoom presentation to give at noon. That went pretty well, but I noticed I was having some oddball issues with my MacBook’s tracepad. The mouse arrow was jumping around the screen a lot, and I couldn’t seem to control it with the pad. The USB mouse still seemed to work reasonably well, so I got through the presentation and figured this would be a job for everyone’s good friend, the reboot.
After the presentation, I went back to work on prepping for a big membership meeting I had to host the next day. This is basically my twice a year meeting where my members tune in, get the update on the association and review things. I’m always a little nervous about it, so I was probably on my 19th revision of the PowerPoint when the mouse arrow thing started getting even more buggy. Thus began the half hour of insanity. It was now 1:30, and I had a call at 2.
At this point I finally did the reboot and when the computer came back on…same problem. Except now the tracepad was totally dead. I did a quick Google search and it showed that this can sometimes be caused by a faulty battery.
I hadn’t been having any battery issues, and my laptop was plugged in with a full charge, but when I checked the battery status it did say to replace soon. I contacted Apple, and they told me that could be the problem, but because my laptop was so old (2011), the Apple Store couldn’t help me. Best I could do was go to a repair shop somewhere in Denver.
At this point, I’m starting to panic because I have this Zoom meeting to host the next day. Erin was out with Henry exchanging some shoes, and right around this point Amelia came to me in a panic becasue some toys she wanted had fallen behind the bed in the guest room. My call at 2 was coming up, but moments later I was crawling under a bed, using an extension cord to loop in these toys and pull them out.
I then rushed back to my desk to take my lunch dishes downstairs quick before my call. I had made a salad and put a light dusting of this super spicy Trader Joe’s ghost pepper seasoning on it.
For those who haven’t had this stuff, I have a pretty high spice threshold and I use about 5 grains of this on my food, and it makes it really hot. This container will last me five years.
I still don’t know how, but somehow I must have gotten some on my finger which then wound up by my eye and then…YEEEEOOOOOWWWW.
Basically, my eye was on fire for the next 15 minutes. I couldn’t even open it. So in about 20 minutes, I apparently lost my computer just before my big meeting and torched my eye. I wound up getting on my call with an ice pack pressed against my eye, desperately trying to sound like I wasn’t in agonizing pain.
I made it through the call, the eye eventually calmed down and things went on. Erin and I talked about it and concluded the whole computer thing was probably a sign that it was time for me to get a new computer, so I started looking into that. And thankfully hers is working OK, so I was able to load my files there and get ready to deliver my meeting from her Mac, instead.
It was a panic inducing 20 minutes, but it passed and all was right with the universe. I later tried to use my Mac to finish up some work. It worked OK, sort of, for a while, but eventually the mouse became totally uncontrollable and was randomly opening applications and files as I tried to work. Not since Scotty in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, has anyone has so many problems with a computer mouse.
Ultimately, I used my iPad to finish up my emails for the day and Islay joined in to help out.
Next step will be to back up the old Mac, and I have an appointment in a few days to meet with someone at the Apple Store. In the meantime, I at least felt reasonably ready for my meeting and thankful to have a working computer to conduct it with. Truly first world problems.
