Plum Blossom and Laptops

Isn't it pretty! A lot of the blossom is out in force and it's lovely. Spring has sprung!
Remember how I said that the disc drive in my laptop had stopped working, and that I'd been quoted €241 to get it fixed, and found someone else who would do it for €50? Well, I got the phone call to say that the drive had come in, so off we went to Auch to pick it up. €45 later I was the proud owner of a new disc drive! The shop man didn't put it in for me, but I had seen the guy take out the original last week to check the part number, so I figured it couldn't be that hard. It was just a case of unscrewing a screw, taking the old one out, and popping the new one in.

Easy...in theory!
I undid the screw, and the original came out easily enough. I popped the new one in, and realised that the fascia on the new one didn't match the laptop. I had a little look at both of them, and realised that the fascia just popped off, so I swapped them. So far, so good. I tried to do the screw back up, but it just kept on going round and round. I took the drive back out again and compared the old and new. Ah ha! There was a little bracket attached to the original, that just had to be unscrewed and attached to the new one.Slight problem - I couldn't get the screws to move at all. I tried, my mum tried, my dad tried. All we acheived was hurting our hands! We each tried it again with someone else holding the drive - no luck. Then my dad came up with a plan - and just thinking about it makes me cringe!

I held the drive, he held the screw driver. I had a hammer (yes, you read that right), and hit the screwdriver and he turned it! With a particularly stiff screw (read into this what you like!!) it can help to hammer the screwdriver into the screw head whilst turning. Anyway, it worked, and now my computer is the proud owner of a new disc drive!

So, I can proudly say that I fixed my laptop with a hammer! And it works...touch wood!

Three cheers for brute force!

Also, I've been posting a lot about Murphy recently, and ignoring my girlies, Champers & Islay (yes she has the same name as my daughter - we adopted the dog when Isla was 4 and couldn't change the dog's name). So, here's a photo of them today after a walk! Islay is on the left and Champers is the soggy one on the right - she loves her swimming!