Basically, the problem is fixed. The problem was, I put the laptop on an ottoman, which has a slanted top, somehow or other (Buddha {our fine puppy} probably knocked it off kilter) the laptop fell off the ottoman and more or less landed on the power cord sticking out of it. So it lands on the cord, wrenches the port that the cord is plugged into and pushed that port into the laptop and off at an angle, so that I couldn’t charge the laptop any further. So, as soon as the juice ran out, so did this laptop.

And by the way, I owe Juice Newton another nickel. Don’t forget to pay your part, especially if you drink orange juice. You know, before her, they just called it “orange drink”.

So, the food log isn’t the best it could be, because I haven’t been able to post on this blog much this week, and the exercise log… well, let’s face it, the exercise has been shit.

EXCUSES: Take ‘em or leave ‘em. I’d like to say that there’s no excuses here, I hope I can just settle for no bullshit excuses. What are this week’s excuses?

Excuse #1 – Laptop broke.

Excuse #2 – My father is in the hospital.

I’m sure Dad loves being one of my excuses. Actually, I think that might qualify as a “borderline” BS excuse. Frankly, my Dad being in the hospital is no good reason not to exercise. It’s a lot to worry about, but there has been plenty of time since Monday (when he went in) that I could have exercised. Instead, the only exercise I’ve gotten this week have been the trip to the dump (Tuesday), and trips to visit my Dad (Tuesday and today). In fact, I wasn’t even THERE to visit him yesterday or today until the last visiting hour, so there’s two wasted days that I could have done something and I basically did nothing.

I mean, I can’t think of any walking I did. Bottom line is, I gotta ramp up exercise. Got to do more walking, even if it’s just inside the house (it’s warm out for February, but let’s not get crazy).

So, I had expected to have the laptop fixed by the weekend, since I have accidental coverage for my laptop. The only problem is, Dell wants the laptop. They want me to mail it to them, and in a month, or two or three (I speak from experience. I sent them my laptop once upon a time and didn’t see it for an entire semester at Rowan) they’ll send it back, all fixed, except it wasn’t last time. I still had to call a technician to fix the lousy repair they did, which almost resulted in the laptop not being sent to me in one piece!

Normally, I have very good luck with Dell. How good? This isn’t the laptop I bought! They took that in last year for exchange. This is actually quite a better laptop than the one I originally bought. The original one didn’t have a subwoofer on the bottom.
This time, Dell isn’t interested in exchanging (yet, it was the technician that got me the new one last year) but they still want me to send the computer in to them. I told them to go to hell. I found out last year that it’s their policy to find other means of repair if the computer in question is used for work or school (wouldn’t THAT have been nice to know last time around), so I told them I use it for work AND school and wasn’t about to go through that again.

They weren’t happy about it, but they sent out the parts and arranged to have a tech come to my house. Today I got a call from them. I guess the motherboard is on backorder, and they don’t want to send the tech out until it becomes available. I tried to argue that from what I can tell, the computer works just fine, with the exception of that port. Their argument was “you never know…” and they do NOT want to send the tech out twice.

So, they let me know that it would be a long time (think hell and cold) before that tech comes to my house, and for now, while I can hold on to my laptop and keep it nice and close, it isn’t going to work a damn. It’s just a $2000 paperweight!

So, I took my personal grooming kit/swiss army knife off and got to work unscrewing the back panel. Turns out the screw I needed to turn to get to where I needed was already stripped, but I figured out how to get into where I needed to be to try to hobo-rig port into place, so that I could plug in my computer! I ended up using one of my thicker keys to keep a wide opening at the back of the computer, and used another key, along with my knife to reposition the port and hold it in place while plugging the computer in. Now the plug seems stuck, but the computer is charging, so that’s one problem solved.

With any luck, my Dad will be home tomorrow, and that will be another. Now to just get those legs moving under me.