Well, I guess I just proved that I don't really need my laptop. After arriving I booted up to check email and watch some episodes of Heroes to kill a rainy afternoon. Later in the evening I booted it up to review the material for class and ... dead dead dead.
Boot, blue screen, boot blue screen, rinse, lather, repeat.
After several attempts at safe mode and other variations I set it to not automatically restart after a failure. The message I get is "Unmountable boot drive". This happens after it has booted, let me choose the OS (there is only one, nothing fancy on the thing) and has started loading the Windows kernel.
Up until this trip I've been totally obsessive about:
- Backing up all my stuff to an external drive connected to a desktop machine at the office, and
- Making a copy of everything I need for class onto the small external drive I carry with me.
This trip I did the first but not the second. So the class got started a little late as I had to copy a few dozen megabytes worth of PowerPoint slides from the machine back in Houston to a commandeered machine from the class.
The IT guy down here had a spare laptop of the same antique vintage as mine. So I spent my lunch break transferring things to that. At least I can do email and watch movies.
Oh, and once again I've been given a hotel room that sucks. The hotel is 22 floors and I'm on the lowest one. First room was on the same floor, by the elevators, I asked to change. After making me wait a couple of hours because no rooms were clean, I got moved to a corner room. I think the room by the elevators was quieter. It's a little windy out and every little gust roars around the corner of the building as if there's a hurricane in progress. Plus we're right on the flight path for the local airport. And there's an eight lane busy street right outside. Kind of makes me long for the nice quiet cave of a room I had in Beijing.
Yeah, I know, I'm whining. Most people would love to have the problem of being in Sao Paulo in the spring time. But I'm just ... tired and ready to be home. So this week is all about endurance.
On the positive side, once I got class going it's all good. Fifteen students, mostly locals, all bright and interested. One I had met before, one I know only by email.
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