Laptop to Desktop? And some other changes.

Grandpa had an oops. He shut their laptop with a USB receiver on the keyboard. Then he put the whole thing in a suitcase only to find a broken mess.

The laptop was still new and warranties don't cover self-inflicted damage. 

However, there's a repair store in Charlottesville. It had high ratings, so Grandma and Grandpa dropped off the laptop their on their way home from a visit with us. Carrie said that she'd pick it up for them when it was finished and then she and Shane could do a return visit.

Things went not according to plan....for the next two months. It was a total cluster. The wrong part was ordered. A second wrong part was ordered to make sure it really wasn't the wrong part. Then the right part was ordered, but the wrong part delivered. The initial tech quoted prices wrong and got fired. His replacement figured out what the issue was, but it required soldering. Lenovo wouldn't release the soldering schematics, so the only options left after two months were to buy a new display and motherboard.....which would've cost as much as a new computer.

Like I said, "not according to plan."

We picked up the laptop after visiting goats. The manager was a nice guy and gave us the display's shell.

Grandma and Grandpa had been fretting over their data, but Carrie assured them from the start she could hook up an external display and hard drive to pull off whatever they needed. With the laptop seemingly a bust, she took her idea a step further.

She hooked up a TV to the laptop and turned it into a "Janky Desktop" for Shane.

She bought a cheap webcam, microphone, and an HDMI-to-VGA adapter to use an old monitor instead of the TV.

And it worked! Carrie rotated the desk and rearranged things for better supervision, as well.

This fixed two problems: The laptop wasn't thrown away and Carrie was pissed at Shane's school computer. On Monday, it had been freezing, not connecting to Zoom, and stressing her out!

It's a big upgrade for Shane. He likes it! He won't be able to take it with him to South Carolina, but it'll make things easier at home.

This started the day before the power outage. The day of the power outage Carrie was inspired to rearrange our living room. I got a text of just this while at work.

She also came up with a solution to prevent Loki from eating cat food (and possibly cat poop). Instead of cutting a cat-sized opening, she got a door catch for the bathroom.

 Shane's not tall enough to work it yet, but he tries!