Author: TechyDad

Everyone knows that Monday is the worst day of the week.  That is the day that everything seems to go wrong.  Sometimes, Monday decides to get sneaky and comes around on a Tuesday.  Yesterday, though, Monday got extra sneaky.  It came on a Sunday.

Actually, the trouble started Saturday night.  My laptop has been overheating recently.  In what I thought was a related problem, it will intermittently not charge when plugged in.  I figured this was from it being too hot.  However, Saturday night, my laptop was completely cool, and yet didn’t recognize that it was plugged in.  My birthday is coming up (Friday), but I hadn’t counted on my birthday present being a new laptop.

Sunday, I began the very important task of making sure that my laptop was completely backed up.  I didn’t want my battery to die out completely, not be able to be charged again, and have important data on the hard drive.  (Yes, I could take the hard drive out and connect it to another computer, but that’d be a pain.)

I got my laptop (and B’s laptop while I was at it) backed up to our external hard drive and took it upstairs to back that up to our second external hard drive.  (We have two so that if one dies, we don’t lose all of our data.  We usually keep one drive "offsite" also.)

I got upstairs and started copying files.  That’s when I realized that it was warm up there.  I went to check on the portable air conditioner and noticed it wasn’t running.  Instead, it was flashing "STOP."  I didn’t know where the manual was, so I tried searching for what "flashing stop" could mean.  Eventually, I found out that it meant that the bucket was full.  The strange thing is that our air conditioner was supposed to evaporate water out of the window and *NOT* fill its bucket.  My searches indicated that sometimes, during high humidity days, it might not be able to keep up and might use the bucket.  Perhaps it had been doing this all along and just filled up.

In any event, emptying the air conditioner wasn’t going to be easy.  The only way to do it is via a drain on the bottom of the unit’s back and there were no drains upstairs.  B finally came to help me.  We positioned an empty Rubbermaid container by the unit, I lifted it in the air, and B pulled the plug.  Then, I tried my best to get the water in the container while keeping the heavy unit in the air.

With the water finally drained, we closed the drain, I put the unit down, and we cleaned up everything.  Unfortunately, some water spilled on the carpet as well, so I tried my best to dry it off.

This would have been the end of the tale, but an hour later, the air conditioner stopped again.  Not wanting to lift the unit again, I came up with a better plan.  In the basement we have a wet-dry vac.  It has come in handy in quite a few situations, most recently when the washing machine overflowed our utility sink and spread water everywhere.

I pulled the wet-dry vacuum out of the basement, but noted that it felt heavy.  With a start, I remembered that sink overflow a few weeks back.  In the craziness, I had forgotten to clean it out!  The water was sitting in the wet-dry vacuum that whole time.  Disgusting!

I lugged the wet-dry vacuum upstairs, plugged it in, and positioned it by the air conditioner’s drainage plug.  I stuffed a wad of paper towels under the drain in case this didn’t work, turned on the vacuum and unplugged the drainage spout.  Water came pouring out… and shot straight into the wet-dry vacuum!  Success!  Eventually, the air conditioner was empty and I was able to replug the drainage spout and turn off the wet-dry vacuum.  The paper towels had gotten mildly wet, but the floor was still bone-dry.

I wasn’t finished, however.  I had to clean the wet-dry vacuum now.  I wasn’t going to leave this water to languish in there for a few more weeks.  I went outside with the wet-dry vacuum and a garbage bag.  I dumped what water I could and dumped the rest into the garbage bag.  Finally, I used the hose to wash down what remained.

Tired and feeling filthy, I came back in the house and declared the day Monday-Posing-As-Sunday.  So how does one end a day as crazy as that?  Why with Chinese food and cupcakes, of course!

As I write this, the wet-dry vacuum is clean, the air conditioner is working, the tub from the first emptying needs more cleaning before it can be used, and my laptop is still acting up.  (Though, if I pull the charger cable tight just right, it works fine.)  So it looks like *most* of the crises are over, but I might still need a new laptop.  Any recommendations would be appreciated.  I just need to balance power with budget pricing, though.  My current laptop’s specifications: Dual Core Pentium 2Ghz CPUs with 3GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and a 15.6" screen.

Have you ever had a Sunday that revealed itself as a Monday in disguise?

NOTE: The Battleship Tie Clip was purchased from TheLovelyTeaspoon on Etsy.