Restart
Categories: Léo’s Insights 2024-2025
My family is a bit strange. I suppose most people think the same thing about their family and likely it is true, but in different ways. Most families have a go-to person who seems to have a bit more intuition regarding computers and phones than the rest. Normally, it is not a parent who is the techie in the family, but rather one of the children. Not so in mine. I have always been the computer, phone and tablet fixer.
Those of you who have some experience in this field will know the easiest fix is usually a restart of the problematic application or a complete reboot of the device. I have advised so many people of this technique, I cannot come close to recalling how many issues I have resolved. Problem with the application not responding? Force quit and try again. Application seemingly confused or sluggish? Shut it down and start it again. Device misbehaving? Reboot. Program not coordinating? Delete and reinstall. You would think I’m a genius, but really all I suggest is to restart, recover and return to work. No brains. No magic. Just restart.
A few years ago, we ran into an incredibly complex failure with our EU system. I quickly realized the problem was beyond me so I called a meeting with our IT team. Nothing made sense. Things were just not working. I arranged to bring in our former IT Manager to help us with the rather complicated problem since he was the one who had designed the system in the first place. I watched in awe and wonder how deeply complex the back end of our system is. It was composed of innumerable lines of undecipherable lingo which took some imagination to believe actually cause things to happen.
There we were, a group of very highly educated and/or sophisticated technicians, neck deep in complicated programming when my wife, Faye, walked into the office. When she asked how things were going, we were quick to respond, “Terribly!” Then she simply asked what I ask every time she has a problem. In her sweet voice she said, “Did you restart?” Everyone suddenly stopped trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Someone said, “What would it hurt?” Upon restarting the server all our problems disappeared. Faye saved the day with the one thing she had learned to try first. It worked!
Really, sometimes all it takes to solve a problem is simply to restart!
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