No Input

Well, after a little experimental surgery I’ve managed to kill my laptop again. Just a couple of weeks ago I had to wrench out a defective hard drive which had, through no fault of my own, decided to make the most horrendous chugging noises whilst accessing. After that, it began to take ages to actually do anything. Soon after that, it would only allow me to access my data if I pushed hard on the laptops casing, just above the location of the hard disc. I spent 45 minutes pressing down on the damn thing whilst all my precious data was siphoned of the ailing disc on to my external hard drive. A quick trip to PC Word later and I was £41 lighter of pocket, but 160gb up on hard drive capacity. Still at least that allowed me to kill another long, boring day whilst I laboriously restored my previous hard drives contents to the new unit. Although the whole exercise cost me money, I didn’t mind having to do it. Since I’d been using my laptop for iTunes, 40gb really wasn’t cutting it anyway, so an upgrade was welcome.

However, having to spend out yet another £40 on a machine that’s almost four years old is kind of annoying. So, how did that happen? Last night, I managed to spill a tiny bit of orange juice on my laptop’s keyboard. I got to it pretty fast, tipped the machine upside down and let it drain. All seemed well. That is until this morning, when I tried to use it again. The space bar was a little sticky. By the way, when I say, a little, I really do mean a little; it was hardly a problem, but it was hardly a problem that I simply had to solve. So, I clipped the space bar off, cleaned it out a little and attempted to fix it back on. Four hours later, I finally threw in the towel and ordered a replacement keyboard.

I really should know better. Any time I try to fix a minor and fairly inconsequential problem I always end up making it worse.

Actually, in an attempt to work out what was doing wrong, I flipped off the space bar on my old and not particularly functional Sony Vaio laptop. I had it clipped off and back on again within 10 seconds. For some reason, the mechanism on my Samsung keyboard is just way more complicated. In other words, I wasn’t being overtly dumb when I expected to be able to fix it all by myself. After all, I’d fixed loads of desktop keyboards. Of course I figured it might be harder with a laptop, but I never realised Samsung had constructed their keyboard in such a way as to make it completely impossible.

My advice; if you have a Samsung laptop, never, ever try to take the keys off. It will only cause you pain, followed by a wasted afternoon (during which you may end up sticking your fingers together with super glue) and then, the worst blow of all,having to resort to spending money to solve the problem.

Tragically, I now suspect that the stickiness would have gone away after a few weeks. Still, I’ll use it as an excuse to cut down on the booze. I only need to drop two pints a week for 6 weeks to pay for the keyboard. Failing that, I could just limit myself to drinking at Sam Smiths pubs, the only pub chain in London where you can pick up a round for four people and still have change from a tenner.

Anyway, not everything has been bad lately. On the plus side I’m now typing this using my newly recovered eMac. Unfortunately, until the genuine Apple keyboard that I ordered from eBay arrives, I’m having to type on my old black Logitech so-called “Media Elite” keyboard. It’s quite frankly awful. There’s just something slightly out of line with the key placements, which means I usually end up catching my finger on the neighbouring key to the one I actually want to press. Sometimes keys don’t even register at all. It’s quite frankly awful. My word page is covered in red squiggles indicating all the typos that have been forced upon me by this crappy keyboard. Also, for some reason it absolutely refuses to type an upper case “o”. I’ve no idea why that could be.

Ah, keyboards; the route to so much pleasure, but the cause of so much pain.
This week I’ve come to a fantastic realisation. I’ve sort of stumbled across a way of forcing myself write. When I’ve tried to write I usually sit on my bed with my laptop. Very seldom does any writing actually emerge. Usually I just waste time on the internet. Laptops are great, you can use them all over the house. You can write anywhere, but for some reason I don’t. So, I asked myself, how do I ensure that I’ll actually do some work. Apparently the answer lies with sitting at a desk. Whenever I take my mini laptop out with me and sit at a desk, I write. So now, whenever I’m in the house and I feel like I should be writing, instead of lunging about on my bed with my laptop, I’ll sit at my desk in from of my Mac. Unfortunately, for now, that means typing this blog entry on my soon to be replaced demon keyboard. Everything I type is a mess, but I am at least doing something.

So, with the “Sitting at a desk = Work” equation solved maybe more words will spew forth from my keyboard (But I’ll have to wait until one of the new ones finally turns up. I just can’t use this Logitech monstrosity any more. All the red squiggles are giving me bad classroom related flashbacks).