My ThinkPad died in its sleep

Today was my second day at Google. It’s hard to believe it’s the end of my second day already. I’ve done so much, and yet there is so much I haven’t done. In particular, I think I should meet up with Hanah, who was my contact for the Google Ambassador Program. Also, I should meet up with the members of my team who work in Mountain View. It seems that there is just not enough time in one week. The Mountain View interns have less time, because they have hosts and may be assigned small projects already, but they also get to be here for the entire summer, so that’s less of an issue.

One thing I forgot to mention about yesterday are the t-shirts I picked up. As I mentioned in my first day post, I was randomly talking with Mike. In case it’s confidential, I won’t say what he works on. But it’s somewhat clear from the free t-shirts, which are totally awesome. Just take a look:

Front, and…

back. Call the number! It’s a voice version of Google over your phone. Add it to your speed dial, if you want. They’re looking for more users. I haven’t called yet, but I’ll keep it in mind for when I need Google somewhere.

Let’s backtrack to my flight Monday, which I don’t think I properly blogged. Interestingly, my gate number has special significance…

For those who don’t know about the error code, see Wikipedia. It used to be that everyone knew, but now browsers are more user-friendly and don’t usually say “404” verbatim anymore. Plus, web servers and internet connections have generally gotten better.

On my flight, we had an awesome view of the mountains as we flew above the clouds. It’s truly fantastic, and I can’t remember anything like this before. What do you think of this photo?

Quick story about landing here in San Jose on Monday. I lost my wallet as I was exiting the plane. As you can imagine, this is a major huge big deal because I have all my important stuff in my wallet. So I prayed about it. I immediately talked to the airport people at the visitor desk. They sent me to the gate. He sent me to baggage claim. Initially, they said there was nothing in the lost-and-found. But I pushed harder, saying that I think I simply left it on my seat in row 15, which is true, because I felt like that was the case. It’s possible I was pick-pocketed, but I trust people enough to think that highly unlikely. Luckily, they found it. Some 15 minutes later, someone brought my wallet out from the security checkpoint and to the ticket counter. Thus, I miraculously recovered my wallet, and, as with all things, I honestly thank God.

It’s time to cover what I put as the title of the blog post. Earlier today, my laptop was forced to download and install an automatic update. I don’t know if this is related, but I felt I should note it because updates tend to be important. During the last lecture about ads– by the way, I’ve been learning a ton by being here at Google. It’s almost overwhelming– I used my laptop to take a few notes. Then, I used Fn+F4 to put it into sleep. I’ve done this many times before with great success. For the rest of the day, I used a computer in a conference room, as we remote interns were assigned to. Then, at dinner, I pulled out my laptop and tried to turn it on.

No go; pressing the power button gave me no reaction whatsoever. The laptop definitely appeared to be in sleep mode, though. It’s a Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad Z61, and the “moon” indicator was lit, as it’s supposed to be. But nothing happened when I tried to wake it. So I tried holding down the power button. It turned off. I tried pressing it. Nothing happened. I tried reseating the battery. I got a small, brief reaction… but no bootup at all. It turned back off. So I gave up. Now that I’m at the hotel, I plugged it in, and it turned on… but Windows XP froze at the boot screen. The progress bar was still moving– the blue boxes continued whizzing across– but I know it really was stuck because I left it for something like an hour. One hard reboot later, and I’m finally up and running. What caused it? (I’m asking you; I don’t know.)

Okay, another weird thing just happened right now: the wireless light remained on even when the hardware switch was off. Using Fn+F5 to open the wireless panel and then toggling the wireless switch seems to have fixed the problem. At least the indicator light is off, now.