Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

Rebecca’s three year old Acer laptop computer has been through lots of wear and tear.  She’s used it A LOT!

She used it so much that about a year and a half ago the keyboard/base of the laptop quit functioning properly.  The screen/monitor was fine, but that was no help.

But, not to worry.  Her older son John had an identical, but brand new, Acer laptop with him away at college.  All well and good, you say, but how did that help Rebecca?

Well, ya see – John brought it come with him when he flew home from school one weekend for a quick trip, despite direct orders from his parents not to do so.  (Come home or bring the laptop.)  For good reason. For several good reasons, actually.  You see, the boy* had a long history of being a bit lackadaisical with his things and a quick trip home on an airline for a casual acquaintance’s a dear friend’s Saturday morning wedding – while in his freshman year at college – majoring in mechanical engineering – and at the mercy of friends driving him around for the weekend -without any time to study, much less motivation – did not portend well.  I mean, we all know how careless airlines can be in handling passengers’ most needed possessions.  Even in the overhead bins with carry-on belongings. Assuming the laptop even made it to the plane through security, his parents worried.  He was 18, this  was his first solo flight and he had proven to be just a bit – unreliable.

But, the laptop made it safely from Lubbock to Dallas on the plane.  No problem.  John even made it around town and to the Saturday wedding okay with his friends.

But, as they got back to the parking lot after the wedding, they had to divvy up to go separate ways.  Things in the trunk needed rearranging.  John was to ride back to Lubbock with one of the friends, but didn’t figure he needed to get out of the middle of the back seat to do anything himself.  So, he sat waiting for the others to get their stuff and leave.  No problem.  Until . . .

. . . they got ready to back out to take John to the house.  They hit something in the parking lot behind them that wasn’t there before.  In other words, somehow John’s new laptop had gotten taken out of the trunk in the rearranging process and ended up on the pavement – behind the wheels of the car – and was run over.

Smashed the monitor to smithereens.  The screen was nothing but cracks.  But, miraculously, the base held “practically” intact.

The irony of the situation was that of the myriad of ways his parents had projected his laptop might get lost, damaged or stolen, they did NOT include being backed over by a car and crushed.  That projection never even once entered their minds.

So . . . John went back to school with no laptop, which somehow, someway, had no school work on it, despite having John having been in school for a semester and a half.  Majoring in mechanical engineering.  Lots of classes and labs.  Doing (supposedly) sophomore level work because of passing high school AP classes.

Anyway, Rebecca now had inherited from her son a usable identical Acer laptop keyboard/base for her own much used computer.

(Note:  John informed his parents he had money in his bank account to buy a replacement computer, which later proved to be, unbeknownst to them at the time, “refund” money from the school from all of his classes he had not attended, which he dropped after the drop date, thus leaving “F” grades in them all and a reduced refund.  But, now some nearly two years later, I’m happy to report he is back in college – somewhere closer to home – while living at home – still majoring in mechanical engineering – but doing exceptionally well.  Nearly a 4.0 average for last semester’s courses, 19 hours, with several labs.)

Meanwhile -

Rebecca was in good shape with her now “modified” Acer laptop computer.  Worked fine with it’s original screen/monitor and reprieved keyboard/base from the demolished laptop.

Move forward another year and a half.

Rebecca continued to use her laptop constantly in her work/jobs she had during that time.  Then, she took several trips.  One trip, just recently, found her in Arizona – with her laptop – during which visit, the back seat of the vehicle she was in flew backward instead of forward, sliding and knocking her laptop out on the pavement behind the SUV.  (Sound familiar?)  Except, this time it did not get run over.  Just dented up a bit more.  The base this time.

The only way she could get the screen/monitor to work was if she pressed the left side of the base/keyboard with her left knee as she simultaneously tried to type.  I mean – have you ever tried actually doing that?

Well – she couldn’t either.

Then, she came to stay with us for a while.  She drug her laptop out and told Tom she was having trouble with her three year old Acer laptop she had used a whole lot and which had gotten lots of wear and tear in her work and travels.   So much so, in fact, she said that she thought it had finally been accidentally dropped one too many times.

She said she probably needed a new laptop, which would be a big pain to deal with to say the least, because she had a ton of software, folders and files she needed.  She asked Tom to take a look at it.  The left side of base was sorta “whomper jawed,” Tom found.  Plus, some part or other was sorta sticking out, instead of being completely inside the base.

Tom got a small bladed screwdriver first and managed to jam carefully push the errant part “back inside” the base.  Nothing happened.  Screen still wouldn’t come up so she could do anything.

Tom and Rebecca fiddled around some more with it.  Pressed around on it, tried several different things to no avail.

Then they accidentally guessed cleverly detected that the motherboard on the computer must be cracked.  They thought, though, that if they could figure out how, to in some way, heavily press on the left side of the base where the motherboard work -  rig it up, in other words – that Rebecca could also type and do what she needed to do at the same time.  They reasoned luckily guessed that, somehow the motherboard would work enough magically work so that she could at least retrieve all of her files and folders off of the Acer to transfer to an external hard drive we have to then transfer to a new laptop.

It took lots of hard and innovative thinking – and that took a while, I’m tellin’ ya – but Tom finally thought of a solution.  He dug a small C-clamp out of one of his piles of unrelated tools carefully organized shop drawers in the garage, brought it in, clamped it down on the left side of the laptop.  The base immediately began to buckle in.

Plan Two:  Find something to put between the C-clamp and the base.  The handiest thing proved to be a stone coaster for glassware from the coffee table.

About the time I walked in the room, that plan failed, as well, when the coaster cracked in half under the pressure of the small C-clamp.  Tom’s head nearly cracked next I calmly kept my mouth shut my peace as Tom said, “Ut-Oh – I was afraid that was going to happen.”

The perfect solution took a while longer as repairs to the cracked coaster had to be made first. But, after it was glued back together with “Gorilla glue,” Tom’s ingenuity succeeded.

Here’s the successful result in two photos:

If you will note – there are now two different sizes of C-clamps attached to the base of the laptop – the small one and a second huge, gagunda slightly larger one, with the large one having a chunk of hickory wood attached to it between the bottom of the clamp and the bottom of the laptop base.  Tom tried to spread out the pressure of the clamps by using two and using the chunk of hickory wood.  Our external hard drive is connected to Rebecca’s laptop on the left side as she moves over folders and files she needs to keep.  We will go shopping for a new laptop for her the next couple of days, I think.

She needs one, don’t you think?

In the meantime – DO NOT TOUCH THE ABOVE LAPTOP COMPUTER UNDER PAIN OF TORTURE AND/OR DEATH.

Cheers!  Dee

P.S.  I know, I know – the screen isn’t on in the photos.  It’s “asleep,” but does indeed light up and work.  Meanwhile, Rebecca has picked out a new computer and we are going to Best Buy this afternoon for her to pick it up.  That seems a bit redundant now that her Acer is working so well.  Until she wants to  close it, I suppose.  But, it would be a good house computer, don’t you think?!

P.S.S. Rebecca just posted her photo of her computer taken from her cell phone.  This one shows that the screen actually works!

*John is my oldest grandson who just turned 21 a couple of weekends ago.