August 20, 2009

I destroyed my laptop screen today (or... how dulce de leche led me down the path of destruction)


*sniffle*

(If you look closely you might notice that some of the letters on the keys are worn off. That happened on my last laptop too. It couldn't be that I type too much, could it?)

I doubt this is visible but the plastic casing to either side of the mouse was cracking. I've wondered if that's why they switched to the solid body style of laptop. The plastic didn't hold up so well.

Last week the gals went to a dude ranch with my sister. The place is called Latigo ranch and I'll post pics soon. But that detail is relevant to this story because two 10-year olds were gone for a week and therefore weren't drinking milk here. And Nathan has had bumps on his arm for ages now and we finally decided to try cutting out (or at least cutting back on) dairy to see if that made a difference. So he's been drinking less milk.

We usually go through 6 gallons a week and sometimes I even have to run out and buy an additional gallon to see us through till the milk man arrives next. But not this week. This week we have more milk than we can shake a stick at. So I decided to shake a wooden spoon at it instead just to see what happened. I boiled the milk, added some sugar, cooked it and stirred for aaaages. (In other words, I used a gallon of milk to make about 4 or 5 cups of dulce de leche.) While stirring I read through the New York Times and the Denver Post and I still had to stir longer but had nothing left to read. So I decided to try to get some work done. I grabbed my laptop (the Macbook that I won from me.dium (now OneRiot)) and set it near me and sorta... on top of something that was sturdy at the time. So here I am stirring and entering data, stirring, stirring, entering data. You get the picture. It was all going somewhat OK until... that sturdy thing that I had set the computer on got hit by one of the breakfast dishes shifting in the sink. It didn't shift far. It really wouldn't have been a problem at all if I hadn't set a thousand dollar computer on top of it. But I did. And the computer fell. Down. to the Ground.

The screen doesn't work so well now, though the rest still seems to be functional. So I suppose if I can find a cheap screen around somewhere we can still use the thing.

Yeah, so that's what happened.

Fortunately I just backed the thing up yesterday. It had problems overheating this summer (which I found particularly odd since it never overheated last summer and last summer was quite a bit hotter than this summer) and shut itself down a few times. It's never acted quite the same since so I was already thinking of doing a laptop switch. The dulce de leche sorta spurred me on toward shifting sooner rather than later.

What am I using now? A Macbook Pro that's somewhere around 6 months older (I think) than the Macbook that did that "kiss the ground" thing. It's a cast-off that Rob bought from his work place. Thank God for start ups that do mini-layoffs and end up with a few extra computers laying around. ;-) (Hey, look at that! A silver lining to the unemployment debacle.)

24 comments:

  1. My letters wear off every keyboard I have. I'm over that. lol Look on ebay. You can get laptop screens there all the time. We get them there. Not sure about this particular model (how available it will be though). Buying a new one from the manufacturer - not sure of the cost either.

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  2. Can you replace the screen on a laptop? Mine is soooo important to me, I worry all the time about things like milk incidents. And lately, I've been thinking bout what might happen if one of these boxelder bugs crawls inside.

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  3. I am surprised that it was lit up. I'd seen that happen twice at work, and the first thing it does is to turn off (or break) the light source.

    I hope you can get that fixed for a reasonable price.

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  4. i would imagine that it's cheaper just to find an old screen that someone's getting rid of and hook it up to that instead. what do you think?

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  5. I guess that too. A brand new one should be really expensive.

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  6. well, if the laptop was already misbehaving and showing signs it's getting near retirement age, this is the time to put it out to pasture and get another one.

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  7. hmmm... A, S, E and C seem to be your favourites. My worn off keys are M, N, D and C. wonder if anyone has done research into these patterns and what they might say about us :-)

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  8. it's not even 2 years old, though. :-P it should have lasted a bit longer.

    i think it'll still do ok if we hook it up to a screen. but the heat this summer seems to have really done it in. wish i knew why it was a problem this summer and not last so i can fix whatever the problem was. maybe because we're streaming more movies and that combined with the overall air temps drives it up too high?

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  9. so essentially $220, yes? i can probably get a computer screen cheaper than that. wouldn't you think? i keep meaning to check craigslist and freecycle.

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  10. Hahahahahah!!! Oh Meg! Wow, that looks terrible. And all because of a little mink!

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  11. you're laughing at me! wait till you see my new ride. you'll wish you could destroy your computer screen over a little milk and get a new one like i have. ;-)

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  12. that black spot on the screen is growing, btw. i'm trying to transfer everything from there to the new laptop as quickly as possible, but some things i don't think to transfer until i need them -- like quicken which i needed to transfer today in order to work on the church finances.

    i don't have any problem accessing the computer through another computer, so the hard drive is still entirely fine. that's cool. i've lost a computer before when anna walked on it. and when i told her not to she deliberately walked on it again with a little extra emphasis. ... honestly, the teenage years are going to be rough with that one.

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  13. What was that recipe again!?!?! ; )

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  14. Hey, that MacBook Pro is a nifty workhorse of a laptop. Some of the serious programmers at work program on those puppies.

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  15. it definitely moves faster than the macbook. but whoever used this last put a scrape in the space bar. i just want to note that before you start making fun of me for wearing out the keys. the gouge in the spacebar was not my doing.

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  16. The way we make dulce de leche here is with condensed milk and boiling and boiling it in he unopened can. I've only made it once as I'm frightened the can will explode. Oh, and I keep food and drink aways from my laptops.

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