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Do laptops get time off?

Today my laptop decided to take the day off.  I didn’t know that’s what it had in mind.  I was working along thinking I’d do a few more things and then take a short break and up pops a low battery warning.  Now, I’ve got the ‘ol laptop plugged into the UPS which is plugged into the house circuit so no worries.  I keep on working.

I enter a stack of books into the database and between books this low battery warning keeps popping up.  So, I stop and check all the connections and everything is plugged in solid.  Sometimes you see my feet and those dangling cords sort of have their own battle.  But all is as it should be.  Keep on working.

Up pops a notice that the laptop is going into some sort of mode to help me conserve power.  What the?  I check the cords again.  Everything is fine.  This time I’m on my hands and knees under the desk checking the entire length of each cord — from laptop to the power brick and the  brick to the UPS.  Yup all the cords in and plugged in solid not wobbly.  I even checked to make sure the UPS was plugged in but knew it was because the printer and the lamp was working fine.

Okay, weird but not critical but I’m thinking I’ll start a backup just in case.  Close all the programs and start the backup.  Grab a book to read while it’s running and I get a Skype just as I get a message from the laptop telling me it’s shutting down soon.  Send word I’m going to be offline and hit send.  Black screen and a beep.

Try to turn it back on.  Dead. Nothing.  Nada. Okay.  What’s there to do but make tea and grab a book and pretend it’s my break.  I tried several times throughout the day to push the power button hoping it would some up.  Nothing.  Finally, Hyperion gets home from work and I tell him about the problem and ask if we should buy a new brick — last time this happened it was a bad power brick.  He says maybe I missed something and he follows the cords all fine and dandy and then pulls out the cords to pull them out in the light to see that they look fine and not broken or scuffed, plugs them back in and powers up.

Everything is fine.  My laptop sits here with this smug look of satisfaction.  I think it just wanted a day off.  I don’t know why it couldn’t just send me a memo requesting the day off.  I think it might be developing sentience and if not that it’s at least developing an attitude.

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