What Saved me - (Promised sequel to What Owns me)

You may not know what I am talking about below if you have not read https://nuancesofbeing.blogspot.com/2019/08/what-owns-me-maybe.html so please read before going further 

Continuing from where l had left.....

Survival was at stake as my work computer had declined to boot. I sent a request to the IT department, but they couldn't do anything till I was back. The remote diagnosis was "can be a windows problem or a hardware issue"

My vote was in favor of hardware issue.

As I landed and rushed to my 1st client meeting of the day, the void deepened. I needed my computer and I needed my presentation. The pre-final copy in my email was good enough when it came to presentation deck. And one of my local team members salvaged the situation by lending his laptop for me to run the presentation on. 

Surviving through the days meetings, it was 7pm and I had no client meetings left for the day. Tomorrow Will be bigger with some key conversations in new client environments and a non-working computer is a bad start.

I picked my car and went on a rescue mission. Stop 1 was "Geek Squad". Who decided not to help (corporate machines cannot be externally booted due to legal complications) After 20 minutes of asking and pleading all I could gather was a lot of sympathy but no solution. They wanted to help, but couldn't and I could understand their reason for that policy.

Having tried some other means, I decided to take direct control of situation. Desperate times call for desperate measures. 

Next stop was a Target store and I was looking for a screwdriver set. They had the larger tools but no precision screwdrivers that I could use. "There is a home depot around 5 miles from here" one of Target employees suggested. I stepped out and then saw a "5 below" store right next to the Target. 20 minutes of going through the aisles, I had a watchmaker set for $3.

It was so precious, "the value of anything depends on its relevance at the time" one lesson that I re-learnt in that moment.

Back at hotel my desk was converted to a makeshift work bench and my computer body laid there, opened using the surgical tools aka watchmaker set from 5 below.

To my delight there indeed was a hardware problem. And an easily fixable one. The SSD card was lose and out of its slot. I pushed it back in the socket and it fit. Next was to put the retainer screw in place. And that is when I found the real culprit. The retainer screw head was smaller than needed. Most likely when this had gone for repair 4 moths back, the technician didn’t pay attention to the screw size. So, with passage of time and usual moves and shakes on the machine the SSD slid and with retainer screw being too small to hold, it slipped out and so the Hard drive was not found when I had tried to switch it on.  Lesson 2 of the day "small and seemingly insignificant details when ignored can prove their importance at worst time".  

A $300 SSD in a $1500 computer came undone because someone ignored the small, almost insignificant 2 cent retainer screw. And the screw proved its importance at a critical time.

I put the SSD back in slot tried some makeshift arrangement to make the retainer work. And the computer was working. Knowing that the solution was temporary, and I will eventually need a very expensive 2 cent screw to provide a lasting fix.

Eventually I handled my computer extremely delicately the next day during client meetings and in remaining of my travel. Finally, I was back in office after the travel  and the weekend that followed. Gave my machine to expert IT team for a permanent fix.

The two most important things that day were the retainer screw a 2-cent value item and the seemingly cheap watchmaker set for a couple of dollars. The issue was fixed. The work was done, and the lessons learnt were valuable.

So, in the end I didn't only survive but emerged richer with a lesson or two at the other end of situation.