Guinea 2022 Day 7 -- Sudden Computer Death Syndrome ☠️☠️☠️
So I woke up this morning bright and early planning to make an update about yesterday (nothing dramatic happened yesterday, just the usual observations), sat down at my usual place at the tables in front of the hotel, opened my laptop and...
"NO BOOTABLE DEVICE"
😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
I employed all my technical know-how, which consisted of turning it off and on again, and when that didn't work doing it again but leaving it off longer, but still no boots, not even a sock.
This is the second time I've had a laptop fail in mid assignment. I don't think it actually experienced rougher handling than it should be capable of taking (just a lot of being carted around in my backpack) -- i think the real reason for the high electronics failure rate while on assignments is just Murphys Law.
My immediate concern over a computer crash is loss of critical documents and irreplaceable pictures -- fortunately after my phone was stolen love Nairobi in 2015 I set automatic backup to Google photos up (AFTER losing 40 days of irreplaceable photos from East Africa), and after my computer went through a period in 2020 as an amnesiac with no memory i got in the habit of writing all my documents directly at Google docs. Other than those two categories most important things probably came from an email and can be found there again.
BUT I never got in the habit of making PowerPoints on Google docs even though i suppose one can. I've spent many hours over the past month making new presentations and refining old ones, and most of that work is probably a complete loss. Though i think i had sent two PowerPoints (of about five I've been using) to the host organization of this project to translate into French, and that was pretty much at the end of the Ghana project so they're more or less complete ... though now they only exist in French. Jk I'm sure i can get the original back from them.
The substantially revised Guinea presentations and had hastily put together of course would be a loss as well.
And of course there's the sheer inconvenience of losing my laptop an hour before i was going to be once again presenting for hours.
As it happens, Ousman had already departed to assist another volunteer, which was unfortunate because he had the translated presentations on his computer. Ibro was still here so we were able, after unsuccessfully spending half an hour trying to transfer it to another laptop so he could still do work he needed to do, to use the presentations on his laptop.
We'll only have "practicals" at the beehives this afternoon and Saturday. Off Sunday, and Monday I'll do my honey harvesting and processing lecture without any visuals because that's one of the complete loss presentations.
I find this all rather frustrating. My computer savvy friends say the memory might still be recoverable though if hooked up to another device.
In other news, so this morning just after i discovered my computer had crashed, the hotel restaurant guy came by, and asks "cafe?"
But see, I said that to him yesterday and he brought me gosh darn tea.
When my translator came a bit later i grumbled about it to him and he rattled off something to the guy and he promptly came with nescafe.
i complained about it to my translator, saying "how does 'cafe' sound at all like "tea??" Like, maybe my pronunciation is bad but surely he could put it together, how unrecognizable can my pronunciation of cafe be (the word in French is definitely 'café')" and my translator said "oh maybe you should have said nescafe."
So today after he says "cafe" i say "nescafe," and he says "cafe?" and i say "_nescafe_" and then he nods and says "okay" and BRINGS ME FUCKING TEA. (for the record nescafe is a terrible substitute for real coffee)
Needless to say from here on out any updates i post will be from my phone, which I find much more tedious to write things on than my computer.