Midnight Ramblings

Well, this is it.

As soon as I'm done writing this, I'm going to be shutting down my laptop and taking it in for repairs. I can no longer stand this "randomly shutting itself off" thing.

Naturally, I'm worried. I mean, the last time I took my laptop in for repairs, they had it for 6 months and did nothing but break it more, until I finally insisted that, under the terms of the extended warranty that they convinced me to pay $300 extra for, they just give me a new one. And they did.

So, what's different this time? I'm taking it to CompuSmart for repairs instead of the place I bought it - Future Shop. Two main reasons why:

1) As I learned last time, Future Shop's service center sucks hard. On the other hand, my parents have had repairs done at CompuSmart before and have nothing but good things to say.
2) Mt laptop's a Toshiba. According to the Toshiba website, CompuSmart is the "authorized Toshiba repair center" in Edmonton. I'm hoping that their staff is more trained in working with Toshibas.

but, another big difference is that fact that the warranty has expired on this laptop, so every time CompuSmart cracks it open, it'll cost me money. I swallowed my pride and asked my parents to help me out, so, that'll help.

But all is not lost. I am better prepared this time than I was the last time. I spent all last night backing up my hard drive to a series of CD-ROMs. Files that I know I'm going to need to access a lot (i.e. my resume, the MP3's of my demos, my address book) I flat-out transferred to my parents' computer.

I also uploaded my address book to my Gmail account. For the time that my computer's in the shop, I'll be diverting all my e-mail to my Gmail account, mainly because Telus webmail sucks ass. But I'll still be checking my Telus webmail for those who didn't get the memo.

I don't know. I did some reading up as to why my laptop may be shutting itself off. the #1 reason why a laptop shuts itself off is because it's overheating. Given the age of my laptop, it's a very real possibility that all that's happened is the heat sinks have become clogged with dust. In that case, all they have to do is crack her open and blow out the dust.

Oh, I hope that that's all it is.

Wish me luck.