Powerwash

I had to attend a Zoom meeting a few nights ago, God help me, and my camera didn’t work. I tried one thing and then another, and it wasn’t user error. The camera just didn’t work. 

My Chromebook is new. I just bought it in January and this is February so I think that still qualifies as “brand-new,” in fact. It occurred to me, as I tried one possible fix and then another, that I shouldn’t have to troubleshoot hardware issues so soon after I unpacked the box that the device was shipped in. But I deal with repair and maintenance issues the same way that I deal with health matters: I Google hotfix ideas; and if they don’t work, then I either ignore the problem until it goes away, or I learn to live with it. 

Yeah, I know. I never said that I was a genius. 

Apparently, you can wipe a Chromebook, restoring it to its factory settings, in about five minutes; and then you can set it up and configure it to your personal specifications in another five minutes. The wiping part is called a “powerwash,” and the online Chromebook community assures me that the whole thing is a snap. And I have no reason to believe that it’s not, because I set this thing up starting from factory settings just a few weeks ago, and that took all of five minutes. I do pretty much all of my writing on Google Docs, and I store all of my stuff on Google Drive, so I wouldn’t lose any data. It's a pretty low-risk operation, in my estimation. 

I was this close to pushing the proverbial button and power washing this thing right back to ground zero, and then it occurred to me that I had never actually powered the Chromebook completely down, and that maybe I should try that first. I have it set to sleep when I close it, but I never really turn it off. So I turned it off. And then I turned it back on. And voila--the camera worked, and the fire hose was not necessary. I was still tempted to power wash the Chromebook anyway, just to see what would happen; but then I thought, why tempt fate? Why mess with it? Why fix that which is not broken? 

*****

So I had another meeting earlier today, and the camera didn’t work. It wasn’t on Zoom, it was on another damn thing. I don’t know. I can’t, with the virtual meetings. Anyway, if the meeting had been a Zoom meeting, then I might just have assumed that the problem was on the Zoom end and not the Chromebook end, but this was a different meeting platform. It’s not meeting-related either, because I just tried the camera again with no meeting in sight, and you know what? It doesn’t work. 

I have yet another Zoom meeting tonight. Did I mention how many volunteer jobs I have right now? I have three, in addition to my actual paid job. And they all require meetings, and all of the meetings are on virtual platforms, so I need the stupid camera. 

I’m going to try Plan A again. I’m going to shut down the Chromebook until it’s time for my meeting. If the camera doesn’t fix itself, then I’m going to scrub this device like a car after a snowstorm, so that it’s squeaky clean and shiny. I’ll let you know what happens. Or maybe you’ll never hear from me again. Oh, technology.