I have heard people saying when one thing goes wrong, everything starts going wrong. However, today I actually experienced this and it was not just one of those bizarre days where I couldn’t get anything done properly.
This was a bit more serious for me. It involved several appliances around the house suddenly deciding it was time for a break.
It started with my refrigerator. All of a sudden the inside light stopped working. I was in panic mode and hoped against hope it was a simple light issue and not a machine fault. Apart from all the food getting spoilt, I was also really trying to avoid a refrigerator repair job as I simply didn’t have the time or budget for it. Of course the worst case scenario of buying a new refrigerator was completely out of the question.
After some frantic searching on the internet, I tried some troubleshooting. I unplugged the refrigerator, plugged it in again and ensured there were no power issues. I also used the old school method of simply putting my hand on the sides of the refrigerator to feel for the usual vibrations. I could feel it and the fact that even after a while things seemed quite cool inside the refrigerator told me it was not a machine issue.
Well after a few calls here and there, I had a friend bring in a new bulb for my exact model from the nearest hardware store. He helped fix the bulb as well and thank my lucky stars the light came on as soon as I switched on my refrigerator once again. It was unplugged before changing the bulb.
I felt a sense of relief as I can’t imagine not having the refrigerator working for days before it gets repaired. Unfortunately though, my sense of relief soon faded when I realized my heater in my small work from home office was not working as it should.
I have one of those portable halogen heaters that swivel around slowly and distribute heat evenly. It is a simple heating solution for a small space like my makeshift home office. However, when I sat for my work, I noticed the heater was not swiveling. The fan from the heater was also making an unusual noise and was quite loud.
The heater itself was working though as I could feel the heat but it was definitely not functioning as it should have.
Now for the worst part. I tried fixing the heater as much as I could going through tutorials online on my mobile. However, nothing helped and I thought its not really that cold so this can be something I can do later. Anyways the portable heater was meant only for my workspace which I built for my work from home situation.
However, as soon as I sat for work and switched on my laptop, well guess what. It wouldn’t come on or boot up. It stayed at the Windows logo with those dots going round and round but absolutely nothing happened. It was my worst nightmare. All my files, data, clients waiting for their designs. All held hostage by my non-booting laptop.
I waited for more than 10 minutes before I forced shut the machine and tried booting it again. Same issue. Back to searching for a solution on my mobile. Most suggestions said to boot windows in safe mode and go from there. However, my laptop refused to even get to the safe mode screen. I waited and waited and waited.
Now I was really cursing my luck. First my refrigerator, then my heater and just when I thought things could not be worse, my laptop.
However, I read that sometimes when a windows update is going on it can take even couple of hours for the machine to boot and I remembered there was an update when I was shutting down the machine the previous night. So then I waited for a couple of hours patiently. Well – it did nothing. Still the dots going around in a circle.
This time though, I can again forced shut the machine and booted it once more. Thankfully this time I got the windows update notification with a percentage showing up. This went on for few minutes and finally my laptop was back on. It was crazy. The relief was incredible. I had no time to relax though as I had missed most of my work day and had to frantically get back to working.
So finally, after a day where it felt as if everything in my house needed repair, I am now back on the couch with my herbal tea, almost afraid of thinking what is going to go wrong next.
Also if you are wondering, the heater is not okay and has now stopped working completely.
