It’s not all bad

Yesterday was a very bad day for things electronic at my house.

When I got up in the morning I saw that at some point overnight my electronic, programmable thermostat stopped working. A bit of research told me it might just be the batteries. Replacing them didn’t do the trick, but conversations with my local hardware store and a rep from the manufacturer told me that I can buy a new thermostat much like my old one for under $30. It will need to be wired in, but I believe I can do that myself. And in the interim I can take the top part off the one in my basement and snap it on the one upstairs. All I’ve done so far is spend about an hour fiddling around to get to this point and the fix will be cheap.

I moved on to my printer. It stopped working a few days ago, and after some failed attempts at resetting it, it told me it needed a new ink cartridge. I didn’t really think that would solve the problem, but figured I had to try, so on Monday I spent $45 for a new cartridge. Needed to print something yesterday so started by installing that ink cartridge. Of course that didn’t solve the problem, as expected. Back online to get more ideas. I was on the floor unplugging the printer to bring it to a table to try those fixes. When I stood up I bumped my head on my computer stand. No big deal. Except that that bump made some of my coffee jump out of the cup and onto the laptop. Not my old onee that was already having issues, but the newer one my daughter passed on to me on Saturday. Run for towels and hairdrier and hope things dry out while I work on the printer.

As it turns out, the printer’s really dead. Poop. I have this brand new color cartridge, a brand new black and an almost new black cartridge for it. I guess I’ll post them on Freecycle to see if anyone has a printer that can use them. Still it’s not all bad news on the printer front, either. Some months ago my son gave me his old printer/scanner/fax. I never hooked it up ‘cuz my printer was working fine. Now I just need to go upstairs and get it, see if it’ll install on my computer, and then buy some ink for it.

Meanwhile, back to the coffee/laptop issue. Despite my best efforts, that keyboard isn’t working. First it was missing a few letters, but now it’s typing in Greek. Literally. Greek letters are coming out when I hit any keys. I’ve replaced a keyboard before and can do it again. It’s not too hard or too expensive. You’d think I’d just take the keyboard from my old laptop and put it in the new one, but I don’t think that’s what I’m going to do. My plan had been to donate the old laptop, along with an external monitor provided by my generous son-in-law, to Pfeiffer Nature Center. I think I’ll still follow through with that plan.

The biggest downside to all this is time. Each of these problems took time to diagnose and attempt to resolve, and the needed resolutions will take more time. I have a big show this weekend, so time is truly my most valuable commodity. Like Scarlet, I’ll think about it all tomorrow. Or next week.