Score one for the pack rat
May. 2nd, 2008 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularThe other day, I got a message from my mother, saying she might not be able to be in touch for a while; her laptop's keyboard had stopped working, and the thing had been pronounced dead by a long-time friend, and did I have any suggestions?
Halfway into an email (because I thought she might switch over to my dad's old mini-laptop for the duration), I remembered that about five years back, I'd gotten a small USB keyboard for use as a backup, in case things went wrong with the keyboard on my desktop machine. I'd taken it with me from New Jersey to New York, but left it behind in my move from New York to Athens. I thought, if I'd stashed it someplace easily accessible, that it might make a halfway workable stopgap replacement for my mom.
The next day, she told me that the thing was perfect. Fit over her laptop keyboard almost flawlessly, didn't block her track-pad, and she's back up and running again.
(She's going to use Dad's mini-laptop during travels, because the thing weighs a lot less, though; she and Dad will be doing lots of travelling in the next couple of months, including a trip to Florida, one to Utah, and a trip to Australia where Dad got invited to a conference. After that, she's going to look into getting a new laptop. Even if her current machine isn't dead yet, a failed keyboard indicates that it's about time.)
On occasion, I've been criticized for getting a small piece of kit because I thought it might be useful in the future, even though there wasn't a current pressing need.
And then there are the times when an addition to my spare-parts pile saves someone about seventeen tons of grief.
Halfway into an email (because I thought she might switch over to my dad's old mini-laptop for the duration), I remembered that about five years back, I'd gotten a small USB keyboard for use as a backup, in case things went wrong with the keyboard on my desktop machine. I'd taken it with me from New Jersey to New York, but left it behind in my move from New York to Athens. I thought, if I'd stashed it someplace easily accessible, that it might make a halfway workable stopgap replacement for my mom.
The next day, she told me that the thing was perfect. Fit over her laptop keyboard almost flawlessly, didn't block her track-pad, and she's back up and running again.
(She's going to use Dad's mini-laptop during travels, because the thing weighs a lot less, though; she and Dad will be doing lots of travelling in the next couple of months, including a trip to Florida, one to Utah, and a trip to Australia where Dad got invited to a conference. After that, she's going to look into getting a new laptop. Even if her current machine isn't dead yet, a failed keyboard indicates that it's about time.)
On occasion, I've been criticized for getting a small piece of kit because I thought it might be useful in the future, even though there wasn't a current pressing need.
And then there are the times when an addition to my spare-parts pile saves someone about seventeen tons of grief.
