Technical Difficulties

I'm a menace when it comes to having nice things. I'm particularly rough on shoes. I'm also not great with electronics. More than one perfectly good mobile has gone to the Great Electronic Graveyard in the Sky because I accidentally dropped it.

In January, I managed to do something to the power supply of the kitchen laptop. The name 'kitchen laptop' is probably something of a misnomer since it doesn't exactly live in the kitchen but it does see a lot of use in the kitchen, especially for looking up recipes, converting measurements, and checking my email while I cook or bake. It's Peter's old Mac PowerBook and it's also quite good for playing NPR shows since its speakers are far better than my little laptop.

But I digress. The point is that while carrying the kitchen laptop and its power adapter from the kitchen to our bedroom (a journey of maybe 30 feet), I managed to damage the bit of the cord that you plug into the laptop. Don't ask me how; I've no idea. The little pin/prong thing inside the connector was bent by about forty-five degrees and the encircling metal had a bit of a dent. I managed to straighten the pin and the power adapter seemed to work as usual.

A few months ago, I dropped the kitchen laptop, but again, it seemed fine. It didn't fall that far, maybe two and a half feet. The fall didn't cause much visible damage except for a slight bowing out of the screen, but it popped back in pretty nicely. In fact, it was a few weeks before Peter noticed anything was amiss.

But then a few days ago, the kitchen laptop started acting up in the charging department. It would be plugged in appropriately, but would still be running on battery. I found that making sure the connector with the pin (you know, the one I damaged) was snugly secure would make the laptop start charging the battery. This trick worked until yesterday, when the battery ran all the way down to 3 percent, despite my best efforts to stop it.

We've ordered a new power adapter and are hoping that will work. In the interim, I figured I could press my little laptop into service. I've been reserving little laptop for writing duty only, so he's been neglected for the last two months. (Bad writer girl, bad bad.) I've only got two problems with little laptop.

The first isn't really little laptop's fault exactly. I have half-written a post about a trip I took last Saturday, but all the pictures are on the now dormant kitchen laptop. While the photos are still on my phone, I don't think little laptop has Bluetooth and I don't have a connector to physically move the photos off my mobile and onto the little laptop. So that post will have to be on hold until either the kitchen laptop works again or I find a workaround.

The second problem is the little laptop's fault. The Enter key does not work. The Backspace key has also become only semi-reliable, as have the backslash and the up and down arrow keys. This is a new development and I don't understand how it's happened. Peter took the keyboard apart and gave it a good cleaning, but the Enter key remains stubbornly out of commission.

The little laptop already had a problem with the five key, but that had an obvious cause. Ages ago, Peter was emptying the dishwasher and he went to put the hand mixer's attachment into the press. Only the attachment was full of water and some of it dribbled onto the little laptop, which had been sitting on the counter. The water was quickly cleaned up, but in the next days, it became apparent that the five key was DOA.

Not too much of a problem, since I could opt to spell out the word or, if I needed the symbol, I could copy and paste it in. Not having an Enter key is much more troublesome, since I use it quite frequently. Copying and pasting a carriage return from a Word document is a handy workaround, but it's still a pain in the ass.

My blogging, commenting, emailing, and Facebooking might be a bit sporadic until I have a fully functioning laptop again. I just hope the new power adapter does the trick. Peter's told me I can also get a new keyboard for the little laptop, which might be a worthwhile investment. But I still think I need a separate laptop for the kitchen, which is clearly a Danger Zone for computers.