The Road to Hell – photo by Paul Stevenson

It has been a rough week and a half here at the Urban Chicken Podcast headquarters. My Grandma Margaret always liked to remind people (and by “people” I mean anyone whenever the opportunity arose) that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  The saying always seemed to me to most aptly apply to those individuals who talk big, but take no actions towards their intentions. My predicament these past few days is better described as the best of intentions (with actions to back them) completely derailed.

My command center here at UCP headquarters uses a Toshiba laptop that has seen better days.  Ol’ Toshi the laptop was a Black Friday, 5 am purchase at an Office Depot after standing in line for an hour freezing my nether regions off.  The problem is that I made that purchased 3+ years ago, and “Toshi” has been trying to die on me for the better part of this past year.

At one point this spring, Toshi went completely toes up on me.  At that point I considered buying a new laptop – only one problem, I HATE Windows 8 and couldn’t buy a machine outfitted with that operating system (or lack thereof a real operating system).  I considered biting the bullet and converting to a Mac, but I couldn’t justify spending a $1k or more on a new computer.   As I debated what to do with a dead Toshi the laptop, I learned that Microsoft had learned the errors of its ways and that Windows 10 would fix all the Windows 8 issues.  One catch though, Windows 10 was not going to be available for several months later in September.

So in an act of desperation, I paid a computer nerd friend to replace the fried hard drive in Toshi.  I just needed Toshi to limp along until I could stand in line the day after Thanksgiving again and buy a replacement laptop at a smoking hot deal price.  It seemed a workable plan, and for a while the risen from the dead Toshi seemed like he was going along with my scheme.

One of Toshi’s many error screens from the past few days.

August was supposed to be my “back on track” month with the Urban Chicken Podcast show.  I had a couple of new recorded episodes ready to publish and was ready to come back strong.  That is when Franken-Toshi the laptop (with its aftermarket replacement hard drive) decided to exact his revenge.  He first started having inexplicable errors which prevented me from being able to use iTunes on him.  Then one day he started corrupting the bejesus out of my C Drive and functions over there necessary for putting out the podcast.

I spent hours (nay… I spent days) desperately trying to fix Toshi.  In the end, he was beyond saving and I had to capitulate that I wasn’t going to make it to a hot electronics’ sale day to buy Toshi’s replacement.  After fighting again with Toshi for several hours two nights ago, I finally gave up the battle. I drove directly to Best Buy, broke out a credit card and bought a new laptop – no super sale was had.  I just couldn’t take the frustration anymore or the delay to putting out the show.  Even outfitted with a working new laptop, I still had to and go back today and recreate several things which were lost on the corrupted C Drive in order to put out the show.

Mission control here at UCP headquarters is finally back on-line and fully operational again.  I should have given in earlier and bought a new machine – lesson learned.