Lazarus The Laptop

This time I made sure to do some research on what laptop I should get. I don’t even want to count how many laptops I’ve had. I feel I’ve had a few. I’m not even sure the longest I’ve had a laptop. Between 7-12 years. Now that my laptop is my office building, I wanted one that fits the new things I’m doing that I never did before, editing, hosting online events whether meetings, webinars or bible quiz night. What I knew was that I’d need a laptop with a lot of space and one that was light because I may travel with it. I watched a good YouTube video that said things like don’t be loyal to a brand and don’t think the most expensive laptop is the best. Once I got those tips, I proceeded to the next step.

I went online and did a search with the new knowledge I had. One of the sites had the option to speak to an adviser online. I opted for that quickly and they also came online quickly. I explained what I would be using the laptop for and the need for good storage. When he asked me how much my previous laptop had, he burst into composed laughter. I gathered the size was small and its true it was for the things I was using it for. He asked if I got it 6 years ago and I said yes. He was clearly a pro at his job. He advised me which one would be good for me and the budget I had. I proceeded to step 3.

Step 3 was to go on their website and make the purchase. I was sure they would have the option for delivery, but they didn’t. This is how the testimony continues.  I was so irritated because I knew that shop was nowhere near me. I’m currently relying on public transport while God is creating my custom-made car. So, going to the shop wouldn’t be as easy. But because my laptop is literally my office, I had to find my way there and asap. Being a Sunday, I knew I wouldn’t get there on time so I would go the next day. I looked at google maps to see how to travel there and saw the bus stop was not too far away. I messaged my aunty who is more familiar with the area than I, to ask if I needed to buy a ticket in advance or how it worked. When she told me the cost of the bus fare, I said I would never complain about London travel. I decided to create step 4.

Step 4 was to see if my beloved Amazon had laptops, whether a good idea or not. As always, I looked for the option of free returns. I found the laptop I’d been looking for but the price was over my budget. I moved on to step 5, went to another retailer’s website to see if they had it and if they could deliver. They had it, it was also way over my budget and at that price they were not even delivering. I decided to take a break and then proceed to step 6 which would involve trying to fix the laptop with the help of YouTube guides. I mentioned earlier the testimony continued when the first shop did not offer delivery. But how did this testimony begin. Well, it begins with how my laptop died. If I’m honest it had started showing signs of poor health 2 years ago.

The memory was low, and I thought it was me and my usual self with millions of pictures and videos. When I say millions it’s not an exaggeration. The other day Google told me not to forget to download 40,073 photos and videos. That’s just on ONE account. I have many platforms where my pictures and videos have been saved. In fact, last year I lost a number that I don’t want to think of when the cloud operator deleted my pictures when the card payment didn’t go through as my card had expired. I tried to fight it but in vain.

After saving the photos and videos to the cloud, the memory issue was still there. I found videos on how to create space and I would do a series of steps, including things like prefetch, temp, %appdata%, optimise, disk clean up, deleting apps. I did it so many times I haven’t had to refer to the video to write the steps I followed. I would especially have to do this when working on editing an episode for my podcast. To be honest it got tedious I wasn’t even motivated to do episodes because of all this work that had to be done. On top of that I had deleted so many apps. First was adobe, even my virus software was deleted then reinstalled just to create space. Photos app was also deleted.

A week ago, when I was getting ready to upload the next episode the same issue came up and by this time, I did not have any more apps to delete. All my documents were on the cloud. Downloads the same except 3 items, that I needed for editing.

The editing platform was not helpful storage wise because it needs you to have a copy of the item on the actual laptop for the whole process. If I deleted it from the laptop, the item would be deleted from the editing platform, and I’d have to start the process again. Initially when this problem started, I googled and found the cloud I was using at the time was creating a hidden drive and that was taking up space. I deleted that hidden drive and nothing changed. After uploading the episode onto YouTube, I would then immediately delete it from the editing platform and also from the laptop so I could have space to continue using the laptop without it slowing down.

The previous week I had an event every evening for prayer week where I was invited to do some prayer nuggets for 3 minutes. Whenever I do a presentation, I like to have visuals, so I needed my laptop. At the end of the week I was also hosting Bible Quiz Night and I definitely needed my laptop to show the questions and to host the online event. I did those events with no glitches, praise God! I then prepared to upload the next podcast episode in the usual method of madness formula. What would also happen is, after deleting the previous edited episode from the laptop, the memory would still be lower than should be. So, I would go through the usual, sequence of prefetch, etc to create space. Well, this time, something happened.

I did the usual steps and when deleting from %appdata%, it took longer than usual. The screen went blue. When I checked the memory, there was 2GB left of 128GB. Meanwhile there was nothing else I could delete. Then the laptop froze for a while. I left it alone. I returned later to find it was still deleting files. That was not the usual. It usually took a shorter time. I gave it time, and it still wasn’t responding. I tried ctrl alt delete, just to try something and nothing happened. It was frozen. Then, the screen went black, but the laptop was still on. I had enough and decided to leave the laptop to its devices, even if it meant the next podcast episode wouldn’t be out as scheduled and as advertised.

Usually, I’d have been upset and stressed. I would have been worried that not releasing the episode as promised would have a negative consequence on a platform that’s still in its infancy. I chose not to sweat it and the way things have gone for the last couple of years, I have come to see that, whatever I feel needs so much of my effort, if it’s not going to work it’s not so I don’t have to stress myself and I refuse to stress myself. And if God intervenes, he will intervene and any negative consequence he can turn around in ways that none of my efforts could have orchestrated. Praise God for how he has been working on me. I continued my evening. I checked on the laptop, and it was still unresponsive. I decided to deal with it the next day.

The next day I looked at it, and it was still unresponsive. I tried the suggested tips from YouTube, nothing. I asked my cousin who is an IT person, and the steps he suggested didn’t work. The laptop was dead. I was not upset because my focus was on the fact that I had done my 5 days of events wonderfully and after that is when it decided to die. I was grateful God spared its life so I could do the important and pressing things.

A week earlier I had considered if I should get a new laptop instead of going through those many tedious steps. I took the laptop dying as the push I needed to get another one. This is a common thing for me.  Sometimes there’s a push for me to act otherwise I won’t act. I felt Long Covid was the push that I needed to finally go and look for the “something else” I felt was out there. This dead laptop was the push to say ok TPA, its time for a new laptop. But when I was ready to take that step, alas step 7 revealed itself! 7 being a beautiful number.

Beautiful because by the 7^th day God had completed creation. The next day was rainy and gloomy. I was not motivated to go buy the laptop or go to the laptop repair place or go to the library and use their computers (max 2 hours subject to availability). I had decided to give the laptop one more go. I watched more videos and when I was ready to try, I prayed and asked God to be with my laptop and just help me save a few documents I hadn’t backed up to the cloud. My gratitude document, another one I write revelations God teaches me and the preparations I had began for the next Bible Quiz night. I really didn’t want to lose them. That would be 7 days lost of valuable info.

I consoled myself that for the revelations and bible Quiz prep, the same Holy Spirit who gave me would give them back to me. But I still didn’t want to lose them. I turned on the laptop. I was to press it a total of 3 times but on the first go, I saw the laptop continue to open up beyond how it had been opening up. I then saw sign up, I saw my name, I was excited. I quickly backed up those documents just in case it died again.

Not only did it open up but when I looked at the memory and it now had 14GB not 2GB. This meant I could upload the podcast episode. I was excited. Literally God had answered my prayer. He knew he was going to fix the laptop so there were no delivery options on any site I went to.

If there was, I would have bought a new laptop immediately and missed the miracle! I have decided to name my laptop Lazarus because he was once dead now, he is alive! Won’t the Life & Resurrection Do it! Off course! Because nothing is too hard for him. He defeats death, hell and the grave, including the laptop grave of 2 days! Hallelujah!