A lesson in not letting your temper get the better of you

Today was my "in office" day and tomorrow is my birthday. When I came home from work Hubbie had begun a lavish dinner and decorated the house with lovely balloons and flowers. Awwww....

I had one document to scan to send to my boss and so I set about getting that taken care of quickly before joining Hubbie for dinner. Of course, nothing ever goes that smoothly...

The scanner wouldn't work. The computer was connected to the network, the scanner said it was connected to the network. The computer was "seeing"the scanner and the scanner was "seeing" the computer. All of which should add up to a recipe for swift-scanning success. Except none of this meant anything to the scanning process.

I'll fax it instead to my e-fax, I thought, and foward it from there. Except the fax couldn't find a line out although everything was seemingly connected just fine.

Ok, so back to the scanner. Nope... the process would start on the scanner and then just stop and go back to the menu screen. The scanner said it couldn't find a host computer (although it was "seeing" it in the settings) and that it needed a host computer with HP software to set-up scanning to that computer. Trying to initiate the process from the HP software in the computer wasn't working either. So, I decided to fall back on the basics: uninstall and reinstall in the hopes that the scanner and the computer would find one another again. Stellar plan.

Two hours and a missed-dinner later, the uninstall/reinstall process is finally complete. But did it make a blind but of difference? Of course not.

So, instead I tried another way to scan. Lo-and-behold I got it to scan one page at a time (no document feeder however) and got ready to shoot the email to my boss and recalibrate my mood for the evening. Phew.

Just as I was trying to attach the scanned images to an email, a thousand Outlook "reminders" pop up and freeze the system. And this was the straw that broke the camel's back. My narrowly maintained grip on my temper was lost and I smacked the top of the computer three times in anger and frustration.

The screen went instantly blank. And not just blank as in static or frozen - blank as in black. The on/off button does nothing. It's dead as a doornail.

Of course, my super-duper Dell Warranty and Extended Support, which has saved me numerous times in the last 3 years, expired just 10 days ago and I didn't bother renewing it. We call that "Sods Law" in England. I think it's known as "Murphy's Law" in the U.S. but in this instance I think "Sods" is much more fitting.

And therein lies the lesson: Because I couldn't hold my temper and/or walk away and punch something cheap like a cushion, my $3,000 laptop is now non-functional. So now, on my birthday, I have to fork over $58 to the guys at the Geek Squad for them to pass on some undoubtedly dastardly news about how much it's going to cost me to get this thing back up and running again.

Fortunately I still have my work laptop, which is how I'm managing to confess my shameful sin to all of you. I just hate it when my misfortune is nothing but my own fault. I can handle any kind of upset, problem, or set-back and usually move forward without losing much sleep or giving something a second thought, but when it comes to doom of my own making, I stew on it, internally kick my own ass on a moment-to-moment basis, and generally provide lots of scornfull "self-talk" that will undoubtedly plague me for days and weeks to come. (The last time I did this to myself was the day after my wedding when I realized I had let the temperamental photographer rush us through group shots - I still have nights where I'll wake up kicking myself for not taking control of the situaiton vs. letting it control me.)


In this case, I guess, the apropos response is: "Serves you right, TV!