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So it seems I spoke too soon in my previous article about how I “Solved My Computer Problems.” I rebooted the computer, was able to blog yesterday, and even got to play a few hours of the awesome game, “Master of Magic.” Everything was going great so I went to sleep around 2AM this morning thinking of giant Stag Beetles crawling around and breathing fire on enemy villages and unsuspecting heroes. But when I woke up and ate breakfast and turned on my computer, I had the exact same loading problem that I had yesterday and the day before! I was really perplexed by the mystery of what was wrong with my computer. And I exhausted most of my ideas on what might be the problem. I had already run and anti-virus scan, I updated most of my drivers except I wasn’t able to update my video card drivers. I also already ran disk cleanup and disk defrag, so I was running out of ideas. Then I got the idea that maybe I could use “System Restore” to restore my computer to a previous state and it was my hope that using a previous system restore point would fix my computer.

Well I ran System Restore and it took about 45 minutes to complete the process on my laptop. And guess what happened? My computer took forever to load and when it finally got to the desktop screen with the sidebar thing, my computer kept accessing my hard drive over and over again. And I wasn’t even able to do something simple like deleting a program shortcut on the desktop. At this point I became frustrated and a bit worried that I was starting to do more damage to my computer than good. So I decided to take my computer down to friends at Device Repair. It was really a bummer having to take my computer in to get fixed. For me, taking a computer into the shop is like having a lung removed so it can be repaired. I can live without it temporarily, but I sure miss it a lot. Right now I am writing this article on my mom’s computer. That’s the cool thing about using WordPress to make a blog. Oftetimes you can write your posts from anywhere that you can jump on the internet. Using someone else’s computer is kind of wierd. You don’t have all your bookmarks, and you have to type in the password for everything. On my computer I have the websites that I use most often loaded onto my Firefox toolbar that is at the top of the browser. Little things like that only speed up the process by a second or so, but when you think about it, adding a bookmark that you use multiple times per internet session into the toolbar can end up saving you several hours over the course of a year or so. It all depends on how much you use the computer.

Starbase 375 from Deep Space 9

So something funny and cool happened to me when I went to Starbucks today. I ordered a Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato because it was hot out. And then the cool girl who I know who was the barista asked me how my day was going. I told her that I was kind of bummed out because my computer was having problems. And then she said, “I thought you fixed your computer already?” And then I thought to myself in surprise, “How does she know this? Is she psychic?” But then she said that she read about my computer on my blog. And I thought that that was really cool! I know that I get a lot of people who read this blog around the world, in places like Canada and Australia and The United Kingdom and here in Newport Beach. But it was very fun to have someone know something about me before telling them personally.

Over the past few days I’ve been having some computer problems. My Microsoft Vista Laptop has been having trouble starting properly. The computer will boot up, then prompt me for my password. But after the main desktop shows up and begins to load the programs in the bottom right of the screen and the gadgets on the sidebar, the computer would stop loading. The little light that says whether or not the hard disk is being accessed would blink every 10 seconds or so, but it wouldn’t do any real work. When I would click on the “Start” button, nothing would happen, and I’d be lucky if I’d get the spinning blue circle thingy to pop up.  So my computer was just hanging there and I tried pushing my power button but nothing worked. DISCLAIMER – I AM NOT GIVING YOU ADVICE ON WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR COMPUTER I AM JUST TELLING A STORY ABOUT MY COMPUTER. IF YOU FOLLOW ANY OF THE STEPS THAT ARE PRESENTED IN THIS ARTICLE BY READING THIS YOU HEREBY ACCEPT THAT YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.

So then I unplugged my laptop, shut it, then removed the battery. This does a rather unpleasant shut down for the computer, but it was all I knew how to do to shut it down. Then the next day I talked to this cool girl at my Starbucks and she said that I could just hold down the power button on my laptop and if I held it long enough it would power down. So I tried it her way and it worked! So when I restarted the computer I was prompted with the option of safe mode, or a bunch of other options. I decided to use safe mode. I wasn’t exactly sure what the problem was, so I did a virus scan. The virus scan said that I had a few viruses in my email and that it took care of them but I wasn’t satisfied that that was the only problem. I also ran the disk defragmenter program and disk cleanup. The whole process took a long time and I remember eating a lot of watermelon while waiting. I also deleted Skype from my computer because that was the last program I installed before I had my problem. So I restarted my computer and things booted normally and I thought the computer was fixed.

Then a few restarts and one day later the same problem happened again and I wasn’t able to finish loading up my computer. I was perturbed but I didn’t give up. So this time I restarted the computer and went into safe mode again. I tried running Windows Update, to see if I was missing any drivers. The reason why I did this was because I ran this one Widows diagnostic program, (I can’t remember what program it was that did this) and it said I was having driver issues. But when I tried running Windows Update in safe mode nothing happened, even though I had networking enabled. So then I read that if I held F8 while booting the computer I would be presented with advanced booting options. So I restarted the computer and held down F8 but my computer wouldn’t get past the first screen. So then I let go of F8 and passed the screen, and then held it down again. Then I was prompted with the Advanced Boot Options screen. I then chose the option of “Restart the Computer with the Last known Good Configuration.” That at least got my computer to boot. But then I remembered that I tried that once before and that was only a temporary fix to my problem. So I tried running Windows Update. It took a little while but I downloaded 5 updates to my computer, 2 Important Updates and 3 Optional Updates that related to system drivers.

I restarted my computer with the new updates and it loaded up the desktop about twice as fast as usual and now I’m able to write this blog post so I guess it worked.

-Tyler

I had pancreatitis

I’m Finally Feeling Better! I was in the hospital for 6 days. Can you believe that? I was in there for pancreatitis. It’s a painful inflammation of the pancreas. What happened is that my pancreas was creating too much lipase. That’s an enzyme that breaks down fat molecules. When I was in the hospital the doctors made it so I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink for 5 days. They had me on an intravenous solution of basically salt water. Did I get hungry? Yes, but my stomach hurt so bad I knew I didn’t want to eat. So when the pain got intense I pushed the call button to get pain meds. They gave me this drug called Dilaudid. The painkiller did the job and it was injected into my IV. The first time I got the drug I was like, feeling pretty good. It felt cold going into my veins and it worked very fast. I was wondering why the nurse asked me if I had ever taken Dilaudid. And the reason why I think she asked was because I got sent on a 1 way trip to the baloney land of Purple Town.  No Joke. Dilaudid is serious stuff. I was in incredible pain and after being pumped full of Dilaudid I was chilling. The part that was lame was that after taking the pain medicine subsequent times, the effect wasn’t as strong. But the Dilaudid still did its job.

When I got to the hospital I hadn’t had a bowel movement for about 2 and a half weeks. So they gave me enemas and laxatives. Those kind of worked but not really. Then on day 4 they gave me this drink called Go Lightly. This drink tasted like liquid wax and I had to drink tons of it. It came in a 1 gallon container and they wanted me to drink all of it. I drank like 5 cups and then puked, then the nurse came in and told me that I needed to keep drinking and that I should have saved my puke so they could measure it. Then I drank more and puked again. But since I hadn’t eaten anything for 4 days I just basically barfed up the liquid and water. It was foamy puke. Then I drank a little more and puked again and then that’s when I threw in the towel and said that I wasn’t going to drink anymore. The nurse then said, “Well, the doctor said you can just sip it until midnight.” And I was like, “Ok, I’ll do that.” But I had no intention of drinking any more of that stuff. Then a few hours later I started to have a bowel movement and it was a watery explosion. That was the case for the rest of the night and in the morning. Then in the morning I got a colonoscopy, which is basically where the doctor sticks you with an anal probe camera and examines your insides. I was put under some sleeping medication when they did it and I remember being in a different place when I woke up. It was kind of disorienting. Then they showed me pictures of my insides and it looked like some kind of alien horror movie set.

But now I’m out of the hospital and I am finally able to eat food and drink beverages. I’m not allowed to eat pizza which is pretty harsh. But at least I’m not in uncontrollable pain.

-Tyler