T+10 days: the disaster continues

T₀ = Friday, May 29th: We came home from a long homeschool outing.  As usual, I put my laptop (mentioned previously) at the top of the basement stairs and went to bed for a nap.  When I woke up, the computer had this big dent on the top and the LCD screen no longer worked.  Apparently Wifey had asked Kid #2 to get something from a shelf over the basement stairs and he had... stepped on my computer!  Of course, this sort of thing only ever happens on a Friday night.

I dug out a 10 year old CRT (that hadn't been used since the move from NJ) and plugged it into the VGA port.  Works!  But there's a reason why the old monitor hasn't been used: it's extremely heavy and it makes yucky "static discharge" noises whenever the screen resolution changes—which is appallingly often.  It's so heavy, I can only use this laptop+monitor combination at the dining-room table, which has hard wooden chairs that don't lean back.  But I managed to spend several hours setting ‘D’ file attributes to prepare for the full backup that this computer has never had (I've had problems in the past that got solved by using file attributes and the dump/restore pair of programs).

T+1 Saturday: Went to Walmart and bought a $150 LCD monitor.  Well, Wifey needs a new one anyway: her old monitor must be at least 15 years old and it's now too dark to play Runescape.  The new monitor weighs much less than the CRT, but it's still heavier than the laptop.  I am able to set it up in the basement so I can have the keyboard in my lap and then crane my neck leftward to see the screen.  Well, at least I have a means of income again.  Also got that full-backup done, which took 3 hours over wireless, and that's *after* marking several gigabytes of Ubuntu files with the "do not back up" attribute.

T+3 Monday: Called Plan‣IT‣ROI, from whom the laptop had been purchased along with a 3-year extended warranty (not my idea).  They won't fix it.  Before purchase, their warranty covers everything except the battery and "cosmetic damage".  After purchase, they stuffed a document into the "packing list" envelope on the box which excludes the motherboard, the LCD, and everything else that might actually break.  This is fraudulent—you can't change the warranty terms after purchase—perhaps I'll get around to calling NJ police on them.  They want $1500 to repair a computer that they know was bought from them for only $1000.  It seems they pulled this price of the air just to get me to go away.

Later: Called Panasonic Canada.  They'll fix it for $600 parts + $150 labour.  Ouch!  But obviously Plan‣IT‣ROI's price is farcical.  I once replaced the LCD on a ThinkPad 600, so I went looking around the web for parts.  Most places that sell LCD's don't have the one I need, but one place has it for $179.  Unfortunately the person answering the phone has a heavy Chinese accent, so I can only communicate with them via email.

T+9 Sunday 6/7: Bought the service manual from 9manuals.com for $6.00.  This is the "consumer service manual", rather than the one Panasonic employees actually use.  The main purpose of the manual seems to be to convince people not to try this at home.  It is written in idiomatic Japanese translated literally into meaningless English.  Example text:

The both sides tape pasted to the keyboard bottom with the spatula is inserted in order of the arrow and then peel off. It is start-up from the LCD side and turns inside out on the top case. The KBD FPC WP sheet is peeld off... Do not damage the spatula ahead and move a top case in the direction of the arrow in order. Note: KBD-FPC sheet cannot be recycled. Please use new parts.

There are many warnings to "please use new parts" because so much glue is used in the design.  I suppose I *might* be able to do this installation, but if Panasonic's goal with this manual is to convince me to use their repair service, the instructions in the manual are probably not reliable, even if I could figure out what they mean.  When I Google for "intuition combination" I find other computer manuals poorly translated from Japanese, but I still don't know what that phrase refers to.

T+10 Monday: Called Laptop Centre of Toronto.  They offer same-day service for $185 parts + $65 labour.  I'll be in Toronto this Friday anyway for a homeschool outing—maybe the disaster will end soon!  Also, Laptop Centre will buy my various broken old laptops for about $30 each, which is better than *paying* $10 each to have the Province of Ontario recycle them.

Hopefully this won't turn out like the last disaster that I used "T+n" notation for.  My Move to Canada project finally ended at T+5½ years.