By blowing up my netbook.
Four days before Christmas.
The cable to the webcam shorted and burned a nice black hole in my screen. The screen itself is simple enough to replace. The cable, however is a whole other kettle of fish. Apparently it's only available from three sources - Acer direct, a supplier in Japan and another in the US - and with a delivery time of 21 working days wherever it came from. Factor in the Xmas/New Year holidays, the inevitable backlog of orders due to aforementioned holidays and the shitty weather that is bound to come in after the holidays and delay everything further still. Then add a dash of my extraordinary (bad) luck when it comes to anything technical. What you end up with is no netbook for best part of a month!
And it is driving me nuts!!
Yes, we have a PC but it's situated in the corner of the room so you have to sit with your back to everyone - not ideal when you have a little one running riot with felt tip pens. Besides which Little Man gets jealous when I have PC on anything other than Cbeebies, Nick Jr or the newly discovered Sesame Street website.
That was the beauty of the netbook. It was perfectly proportioned for stealth blogging. And stealth tweeting...*
In the evening the PC is reserved exclusively for the Other Half to tweak his website, list stuff on Ebay, read crash.net and play cards. Which is why, of course, I got the netbook in the first place. It allows me to write, edit photographs, build my own website and tweet to my hearts content from the comfort of my sofa. It saves us getting into fisticuffs over keyboard rights and having shouty conversations that begin with "wait until I win a game of Spider Solitaire..." Not for nothing did I name it 'The Bringer of Peace and Harmony'.
Even if I could get on the PC it can be so slow that I can bath the Little Man and get him to bed in the time it takes to delete that last sentence, and there are so many pictures of bike spares (Ebay fodder) stored on it that the photo editing suite takes about 15 years to load...
So I have been reduced to drafting this post ON PAPER. WITH A PEN. The idea is that it will only take 15 minutes to transcribe it to Blogger and publish it. I surely should be able to grab 15 minutes at some point during the day. It probably won't be that simple. It never is.**
I wonder if it would be easier to just scan the sheet of A4 and then post as a picture but I fear you may not be able to read the coffee-ring decorated, handwritten scrawl.
And, besides, the scanner doesn't work either...
*Yes, Twitter I have missed you terribly, in case you were wondering.
** It was, actually, surprisingly simple. Apart from the Little Man constantly saying "Are you nearly done yet? Can I go on Cbeebies now?"
All sounds like a nightmare!!I frequently get kicked off for Octanauts!
ReplyDeleteNightmare!! At least he's past the 'pressing the big blue button just as you're about to publish the post that's taken you an hour to write' stage!
ReplyDeleteNot quite... He likes to randomly press buttons when he thinks I am not looking. He hasn't deleted a post yet. Although he did delete all of daddy's saved programs on the Sky+ just before Christmas!
ReplyDeleteIt's bad enough now - he's only 3 1/2. I hate to think what it will be like when he starts school and has legitimate reasons to use the pc... 'I have to do research for my homework, mummy'
ReplyDeleteDon't know how we managed with just the pc. Got the laptop about 6 months ago and haven't looked back. In fact there are times when we could do with a 3rd pc so we have one each, but that seems extravagant. Hope that lead arrives soon.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny isn't it? We were dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century when we got our pc (even my parents had one before we did!) Now we can't live without the darn thing!!
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