Thursday, September 01, 2011

Laptop Dying

Battery or What, But Not Really Worth It

My laptop keeps hibernating and giving me a "critical battery" message. Then it tells me to switch to AC power, even though it is already plugged in. I suspect the whole power system has gone haywire.

Repair, or not to repair?  $100 or so for a battery and a minimum of $30 just to diagnose the problem and who knows how much to fix it. H-m-m-m-m.

My Ansur commission check will just about cover the cost of a neat little Gateway Netbook---so I bought one. I may well end up taking that with me to my medical adventure instead of the tablet. The size is not a very much different and the netbook runs Windows, so it is easier to use. Works a treat with the WiFi too, so I am all set.

Bless the electric company guys for getting us back to full power, the cable guys for restoring all that soon after, and my wonderful hay man who came today with a trailer load to keep the Boys well fed while I am away. Things are about back to as close to normal as possible.

I am still cleaning house, after a lost day due to storm prep, but I will get just about everything done. I do need to do at least a partial lawn mowing and perhaps do some weed whacking before I go, but that's a Sunday job so I don't get run over on the road.

The barn and Boys are OK, but I do need to put out feeding directions and label things and I need to go to the feed store to stock up so there's plenty of feed on hand.

The Boys are, it seems, delighted to have their fans back on. It has not been excessively hot after the storm, but even with all my fly controls in place, there are some annoying flies about and the fans blow them away. All the rain has provided too much good fly breeding habitat.  I'm sure they are worse at other barns, so I won't complain too much.

I am using the water I stockpiled to fill the water tub by the barn`so it won't go to waste.  I am happy to find out that the two storage containers look to be able to fill the water trough twice. That's good to know. All in all, I probably had enough water to last the horses for at least a week. Yea!!

I took some of my thawed out frozen food over to a friend's house last night and three of us had a nice dinner.  I ended up cleaning out the entire freezer as a result, so now there is plenty of room for new food. I hated to throw some things away, but it wasn't worth taking a chance.  It seems most everything had thawed out during the storm, and even though it kept cool, it's not worth a risk of eating stuff that's refrozen.  Some of it was probably on the brink of expiration dates anyhow, so cleaning out was due.

I did make a nice pot of onion soup and have put a container of it in the freezer. I've never tried that before, but it's worth a try.

Off to get the cleaning done.

5 comments:

  1. You sound so organized. I'm sure you'll get everything done before you know it. Nice that you got the hay in that's one more thing not to worry about.

    Too bad about the laptop but the new one sounds nice. The rehab where I was had no way to hook up or get onto the internet so I was without for two weeks. They didn't have ipads back then, that would have come in handy...I think. Not very technical here.

    ReplyDelete
  2. glad to see you back online.

    the BBC had some photos of the after effects of irene, and one was of a chap walking along the top of a wall, water all round him, said to be in New Brunswick - which, as I recall, is you/your area? or am i wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Onion soup freezes just fine. Something to look forward to.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow, you are really making progress! Necessity is the mother of invention or at least motivation in this case. Bummer about the laptop - these things have a limited life.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh! new toy ^-^ Computer type electronics does not last long at all. It is cheaper to buy the new upgrade gadget rather than fix the computer ...

    ReplyDelete