Dell chat, poor kid. I wanted her to say, on record, that I could sub something like a screwdriver for the ‘scribe tool’ called for in the manual; the ‘scribe tool’ is something Dell servicecritters have, but they’ve lately declared this keyboard on the advanced Latitudes a ‘customer replaceable’ item, and haven’t revised their manual.
Now I’m not going to take a screwdriver contrary to instructions to my livelihood-machine and screw it up, nay: I want a Dell rep to tell me it’s ok to do it without my prompting him. I’m trying to get same out of a young lady who is probably a)young and b) has probably not personally repaired anything in her life.
Shall we say, 18 minutes into chat, we finally got the magic sentence on record. And Jane and I replaced the keyboard in about 5.
Now I have caps again! Hurrah!
The snow turned to rain, is snow again, and the koi are tootling about.
I’m surprised the koi are so active; a spell of warm weather might wake them up, but unpleasantly surprise them when we get the inevitable April blizzard.
I take it that the malfunctioning keyboard was on your laptop? I find laptops very arcane to deal with. My weekend exercise was opening the access panel that the Eccentric had thoughtfully put in and examining how much effort it will require to replace the shower valve. Copper pipes at the base, yay! but above that, iron pipes, and I will need to install cutoff valves and some sort of block to support the new valve. Time to rehone my soldering skills.
Pickup an inexpensive USB keyboard from a local electronics store. Next time the on-board keyboard acts up, plug in the USB one, use the Function key to switch inputs and work on until the replacement arrives.
No sense suffering a malfunctioning keyboard when they are stories to write.
That’s why my primary writing computer is a MacBook Pro, and my backup is an IPad. No problems with the keyboard, and if I do have problems, there’s 5 Apple stores withint a 1/2 hour drive where I can get repairs done.
Wayne
With the price of Apple hardware, it’d better NOT malf anything like as frequently as cheapo IBM-clone boards!
Glad the fish are ok!
Is it Dell’s fault that C.J. insists on taking her keyboard through warped space on a regular basis, and subjects it to all sorts of extreme climates and sudden hostilities? Poor, abused device.
… not to mention Skkukuk’s Dinner …
😆 It does get a lot of abuse. Right now I’m typing with an 8 lb cat attached to my wrist. Occasionally she reaches out and tweaks the touchpad, just because she can. If she ever connects it to the movement on the screen, we’re hosed!
Heh. I often end up with a Siamese using my laptop as a tummy warmer, and a Beagle as a laptop desk. Ain’t pets wonderful?
CJ said I could post this, so:
To celebrate my birthday, I have a new book out!
Kat and her boyfriend frantically fight the enemy with the aid of a lazy tom cat, an African gray parrot who only speaks in verse, and a wise-cracking cockatiel with a bad attitude.
She’s trying very hard not to think the world is doomed.
Kat Among the Pigeons
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/45956
I hope you’ll take a look!
Congratulations! It takes a lot of work to finish a book. A lot of work. With luck, well, let’s wait till the end of March 🙂
Bought it. Took a while to figure out the Kindle software on the IPad though. You’d think that Amazon would explain things… Anyway I’m on page two right now, but it’s going to have to wait until tomorrow, I’ve got a 1000 words more to write tonight myself.
Wayne
Happy Birthday! I liked the blurb, I’m trying the sample…
Happy Birthday, zette, to both of us. To celebrate, I’m going to stay up all night reading your book. I’m a sucker for talking cats.
My cat Py likes to sit on the keyboard, and if she wiggles just right she turns off the wireless connection. It took me many iterations to figure out what she was doing and how to turn it back on.
Zette, I’ll get that book, thanks.
“Scribe tool.” It’s either a screwdriver or some techie tool or Dell-speak for the like. Wonder if I can hunt up a wirehead who’d spill the beans…just not in the kbd.
Yup, getting a keyboard past Urtur or Tripoint, or certain other iffy physics spots, with a balky vane and crew walking about in jump….
Have had the joy(?) before of an otherwise inoffensive cat take it into his fuzzy brain to see how chewy and tasty a data cord might be. Apparently, it was not as nice on the teeth and gums as anticipated. Probably lucky said cat didn’t get a nasty bite back, too. But he never did it again. Guess it wasn’t as good a snack or toothbrush / flosser as he thought.
A friend will swear a previous cat of theirs figured out the volume and channel up/down on the TV remote, and would make editorial comments on his humans with same, or check favorite programs, such as catch the football cat-style. One never knows….
In my experience, a scribe tool is a device shaped like a common ball point pen, but instead of having a retractable point, it’s got a super hard tip, probably something like tungsten carbide, or the like. It’s used for scribing metals, usually softer metals, instead of using a china marker (grease pencil) or a regular permanent marker. The scribing is harder to take off. It is used by sheet metal workers to “scribe a line” for cutting the metal, the same as a carpenter scribes a line with a pencil for cutting a piece of plywood.
The other possibility is that it’s a “scratch awl”, I have one in my mini-screwdriver set I got as a gift from Radio Shack years ago. It’s like a screwdriver, but instead of a flat blade or a phillips, it’s a sharp point. Useful for poking into places that contain hidden clips that you have to press to release.
:lol:—I’m thinking ‘scribe tool’s’ a fancy tech term for a ladies’ pinky fingernail. 😉
I know I get twitchy about whether to drag out the wheat germ food for my goldfish/koi after several consecutive days to 50+F weather. The fish are cruising the surface rather than logging down low. So I put duckweed/azolla etc from my inside tanks out for them, just in case the fish feel the need to eat. Mine are up against the house in 150g above-ground stock tanks so they get warmer than yours. I haven’t found the need to use a heater or aeration, but I’m not in as cold a climate as you are (western WA). The koi should be old enough to think about spawning this year (I reared them from eggs), and the shubunkins and sarassas spawn like the dickens most summers. I end up donating extra fry to the local aquarium club for live food. Heck, who wants a kajillion fish to support…..not me>>>
The cats love my laptop. They like to sit behind the screen because it gets warm there (partly because hot air vents out the back). Osiris, our big black cat, likes to rest his chin next to the keyboard, because it gets warm there too. He tends to slowly move himself until he starts obscuring the keys and I have to gently push him back. If I get up, he’ll reach his front paws all the way across.
Loki, on the other hand, our oriental shorthair, likes to sit right in the middle of the keys. He has sent email with his butt before.
They all do this much, much more when they think it’s feeding time. They have a finely-honed sense of what will bug me enough to get me to get up and feed them.
Thanks everyone who looked at the book. I hope you enjoy it!
My cats are trained to help writers:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zettepics/4829087793
I didn’t get to orde the ebook today, but will tomorrow.
I just have to share this since it’s such a nice review of the book. I hope no one minds!
http://book-recommendations.blogspot.com/2011/03/kat-among-pigeons-by-lazette-gifford.html
And now back to work.
Sounds like you might need a spudger. It’s a really useful took to have laying around whenever you need to poke something electronic. Keyboards can be a real pain to replace. At least this was the case on my old Powerbook. I’ll have to look at the new Dells. In find it hard to believe they expect the customer to replace their own keyboard unless it’s really modular. I know the only reason I tackled my laptop’s keyboard is that it was so far out of warranty that nothing mattered once I backed my hard drive.