Who or What Made Me and My Computer Sick?

Tweet

I know friends of mine have been ill, and I know I was ill (and still partially feeling it this morning), but... did you guys have to pass it on to my computer (and me)? I think it's sick, too! Yesterday, items weren't going to the printer. It (the printer) kept "refreshing" itself. I mean, come on! How much does the printer have to primp to make things come out pretty? Pretty much, it took forever to print something, then took forever to cancel it. Then, I tried to "crop" a photo. I had accidentally left my daughter's full name in a photo I posted to my blog and had to take that out. Silly me. I know btter than to put that kind of information in a post, don't I? And I preach so much to my girls about internet safety... You would think I would've thought of that before I posted the picture... Nevertheless, it is fixed, now, However, it wouldn't "fix" at first. The ill thing (the computer) kept telling me I did not have enought memory, and shut down the program. "You've got to be kidding!" ran through my mind. So, I did a system clean out and freed up enough space to fix the photo. I got it posted (everything ran EXTREMELY slow), and moved on to other tasks. I consider myself fairly computer savvy. Mind you, I'm not tech-y, just a normal average "joe-ette", who can do a lot, but not everything (and still has much more to learn). So, I thought I'd clean out my system even more and ran some bot checks. Something that usually only takes a half hour to an hour took over four! Since this binds up the system a lot, needless to say, I didn't get much done on the computer yesterday. The bot checks got done, and I restarted the computer, only to have... THE PRINTER GO BERSERK AGAIN! Hey! I just deleted and cancelled every pending document in that thing. It just started oing waht I call "the slug." It prints out a little bit on one page, pauses (for a long time), then prints out a little, and on and on. And the stupid thing keeps blinking, like it's actually working! P-shaw! Ugh! So... I shut everything down. Then I felt ill. This morning, I try a different tactic. I am (tired and grumpy) but trying to "act" like I'm calm and serene. It's really easy when you are very tired... So I calmly walk to the computer and turn it on. "There, now, baby... you've had a long night's rest..." (Sigh...) It decides to wake up slowly and takes its time to boot. (Sigh...) Log in...(Sigh...) "My this is taking a long time!" The hour glass (cursor) seems to be in that position for much longer than normal, and most of the Desktop icons are still in their larval state. Some things just never started. Skype didn't start up automatically, neither did Yahoo Messenger, or the WeatherChannel (but hey! I already KNOW it's cold outside!), or Smilebox... then what happens? THE PRINTERWENT BERSERK AGAIN! What the heck? It starts spitting out stuff I could sear (but I won't)that I deleted yesterday. And guess what... I had even truned off the printer to clean out the cache. Yikes! Hmmm...let's review the symptoms. When did they start? My computer is old in comparison with a lot of others. Put it this way... there is no USB port on the outside of my tower. Uh, I had to add a card to get a USB connection to hook up the printer, when we got that. My memory is almost full... too full to do a defrag... OK, so I have not exactly contributed to the wellness of my computer. However, all systems were go until I added Skype the other day. No, don't get the wrong idea, it is not Skype's fault. I noticed that my headphones didn't work, so I can only "chat" through the keyboard and not actually talk aurally to someone. The sound would not register, and my computer did not pick up audio hardware. Could this be the beginning of something serious? I will have to take it for a check up, especially since more things happened yesterday and today. For now, I will just have to baby my computer, and take it slowly. I think I'lll let the two of us "sickies" take a little nap. After all, they are such children, and growing up so quickly!