Keyboard o'Doom, Day... well, it's been doing this for a while, really

It's doing it again. I replied to one of the comments to my last post, & it took a lot longer than it should've... & I don't hve time to keep c/p'ing, got to get ready for school. I'll try & fix stuff later, if the stupid keys are working again. (& there're some I've got to c/p, b.c. 'again' is 'gin' if I don't. So glad the grbge guys got me up erly, so I hd time to do LJ posts tht look like greek, or some kind of scry plebe code.

Dear anna/shadowtech keyboard,

I love you lots. Please work. Please just freaking work.
argh, I don't hve time for this. truly do not. 'a' key is making kinda sticky sound no hen I try to use it, others don't, but they're still not working either. Seriously, wtf?

frustrtingly yours,
Me

Welcome to... Keyboardgate

Hey, guys. I'm writing this in-between bouts of swearing. I'm using Mom's laptop, Morden, which isn't exactly my favorite computer. Most of the swearing, though, is being directed at the Gateway site.

I've been home since noon, and I've spent most of that time, excepting the couple of minutes it took me to haul Morden out of Mom's room, move Anna, and plug Morden into my phone line- I've spent most of that time poking at Google and Gateway, trying to figure out my keyboard issue.

It took a little over an hour of searching, swearing, and prodding the Gateway site's crappy search features, before I learned that the keyboard for my model is replaceable. They have some (kinda scary) step by step instructions, with pictures, in PDF, for how to replace the keyboard. They start with "This package contains your replacement keyboard..." or some such. So I know that they do make them, or that they exist somewhere.

What I suspect it's going to take me another hour to figure out, is if they have one in stock, and how much it would cost me. I don't know for sure yet that the keyboard needs to be replaced, but I suspect there's a strong possibility of that.

Mom offered to call the grandparents about the tech guy they have on call these days- and they need one. I love my grandmother, but she has no common sense at all where things like computers are concerned- she opens all those attachments they tell you not to, forwards them to half the family... Mom and I always say half the reason we have anti-virus software isn't because we're worried about hackers and worms, it's because we're worried about Grandma.

Anyway. This guy fixed a hardware problem they'd been having with the CD drive in their new computer, so Mom suggested calling the grandparents and getting this guy's number from them. I'm not sure how much he'd charge to look at Anna's keyboard, or to fix it if it's fixable, but his rates can't be too outrageous, or the grandparents wouldn't give him their business.

So, I'm thinking, call him- I offered to call Grandma myself this morning, but Mom said she'd do it, and I, uh, didn't argue too hard about that- and see if he can take a look at Anna over the weekend. Apparently he does house calls, but he may have a shop we could take the laptop to, too. (I suspect half the reason he makes house calls to Grandma's is that they've got one of those bigass tower CPU things, and nobody wants to haul one of those all around town.) '

But while I'm waiting for Mom to get off work and tell me where we are with this, I thought I'd do some research. I was kind of afraid that the keyboard would end up not being replaceable at all, so that I'd be looking at replacing the whole fucking laptop if the keyboard wasn't fixable. And after having Anna II's predecessor, Anna I, blow up one morning when I turned it on to check my mail before school... I wanted some warning this time, if my baby's days were numbered.

2:58 PM
( I've pretty much given up on Gateway for now )

None of this is really important, mind, I just felt like whining a bit about it. Anyway. I think I'll shut up now and go do something real. I don't have any idea what, but something.

Fannish 5 - Nitpicky bitchyness

From fannish5:
What five nitpicky things do you wish writers in your fandom(s) would get right?

I have to say, I don't actually do a lot of reading in my fandoms these days, outside of certain archives, groups, etc. I probably should read more than I do. So... here's some stuff I came up with off the top of my head, that I vaguely remember from, say, the last time I trolled Fanficton.net. (Which has been, you know, a while.)

#1- Alias: Okay, I know the finale did some wonky stuff (some of us, me included, would say it went somewhat beyond wonky, into the realm of "J.J., put down the bong, and never drop acid again, ever.) but please please try to remember all the canon that came before it. Irina, for example. Not always evil, not always simply out for global domination.
(A special no love to J.J. Abrams on that one, for making Irina a Bond villain. Of course, what do I care? My Irina has been AU, one way or another, since the end of season 2.)

#2- Harry Potter. Slytherins are people too. No, really, stick with me on this one. Not all Slytherins are cardboard-cutout evil (are we sensing a theme here, btw?) ...and at the same time, not all of them can be redeemed, or should be. One thing Severus Snape does not need in any way, shape, or form, is your vapid, Mary Sue self-insert OC and her vapid, Mary Sue-ish purple prose. And his hair really is greasy. Please just deal with that.

#3- All fandoms. Okay, this is really nitpicky. I write a lot of AU. Some of it's a little AU, some of it is a lot AU. It's all got one thing in common: I change stuff. This really isn't that hard to understand. But people will insist on believing in the main AU (for example, I had someone review "Never To Be Alone In The Dark", which is an unfinished chapterd Babylon 5 story where Marcus survives. (I'd link it, but it's M/I, and most of my friends are sick to death of that one, and I don't want tomatoes thrown at me.) The reviewer was okay with that part, but told me I'd made it look like Marcus and his brother hand gone through Ranger training together, which they didn't do. Except that in "Never," they did. This isn't in any way really important to the plot, it's just something that comes up in a conversation Ivanova has with a Ranger who had a crush on William, Marcus's brother. And yet every time I go through my folder of saved reviews- and this one was overall nice, and I did save it- that comment drives me fucking crazy.

I guess it bugs me because it's not the only time that's happened. I had people- numerous people- accept the total freaking AUness of "Emerald & Ebony," in which Harry kills Voldemort in 5th year. (Happens 'offscreen', as it were, but still.) And what do they gripe about? I had Snape and Minerva the same age, and this apparently is a serious goof on my part. Except, you know, for the part where I meant to do it that way.

One of these people also told me how old Hagrid was. Hagrid played no major part in the story at all- I think I had him there for about two seconds, talking to the Trio. His age had no relevance. (And, not being a Hagrid fan, I really didn't care.)

It's fanfic, kids. It's all pretty much AU anyway.

#4 - Alias. History, people. If you're going to do something like write about Jack and Sloane running around doing CIA stuff back in the day, or Irina doing KGB stuff, please please try to get at least a faint grasp on what was going on in the area of the world you put them in, at the time you put them there. I know it's complicatd- I have a huge book on the KGB that I still haven't made it all the way through- but I know we can remember the big stuff, like when the Soviet Union collapsed. There should be an obvious difference between AU ("What if the Soviet Union never collapsed, and Irina was running the KGB?" and historical inaccuracies ("It's, say, 1999, and we're still talking about things like the Iron Curtain, West Germany, and Krushchev, not in an alternate history kind of way, but in an "oops, I got a D- in history, sort of way.")

#5 - Star Wars. This, too, is quite bitchy on my part, but, look. I've read the majority of the books, particularly the Zahn novels, about a billion times, with particular attention to the characters I like best. Please spare me the "I think 'x' was standing over there, not there when y event happened." Dude. I re-read that chapter, just to make sure I got it right for the fic. I do know what I'm doing.