Computer kablooie
Our family pet, Maple the cat, is more than a year old which makes him like a human male in his twenties living at home.
Recently he has been running all over the apartment meowing like a maniac for food and getting into garbage. Maybe it`s just his nature, or maybe it`s a new thing aggravated by his recent neutering surgery. We bought covered garbage receptacles to keep him out of the trash. Many times we have woken up in the morning and found food garbage strewn all over the place. Other days and nights he gets into other things - dumping my daughter`s jewelry case and all its contents on the floor of her room; climbing up on bookshelves, knocking all kinds of things over, grabbing things from shelves to chew and play with, etc.
Worst of all was the disaster on the night of Friday, January 18, 2013 when he knocked my laptop computer off my computer desk - the computer that I bought in Guelph last summer - and the fall broke the AC/DC power adaptor plug that inserts into the port on the side of the machine. I couldn`t charge my battery any more, meaning that the expensive computer became just a pile of junk when the battery ran out of juice on Monday 21st. I went to a major electronics shop in Shinjuku, central Tokyo (a major commuter and business hub) called Bic Camera looking for a new power cable and adaptor. But they didn`t sell anything that fit my computer. Even though my computer, a Toshiba Satellite, is made by a Japanese company, the Satellite computer is a North American model not sold here.
So I visited Toshiba sites on the internet looking for spare computer parts. There are lots of sites that sell lots of parts - direct from the Toshiba corporation itself, or from private vendors advertising their merchandise online. I had to be careful to find exactly the right part to match exactly the right computer. That meant looking carefully at the computer`s series number and model number printed on labels on the underside, and doing the same with the adaptor. I needed a magnifying glass.
I even E-mailed the Staples store on Woodlawn Road in Canada where I bought the computer. They eventually E-mailed me back to say that they do not have any such part, so sorry, which is odd compared to Japanese electronics stores that have shelves and shelves of replacement parts for the models sold here.
I could not find a matching replacement part on a parts website. But when I tried Amazon.com I found exactly what I needed on the first try. Or so I thought. So I ordered this $50 adaptor and power cord on Sunday 19th and waited for it to arrive. It arrived on Tuesday 29th, but when I opened it the plug did not fit into the port on the side of the machine, even though it was the correct model.
I have been using Ken`s computer, but I have so far been unable to upload the operating system of my printer into his computer, meaning that I cannot print any documents.
All my data is stored on memory sticks that I carry around in my pocket every day. But the original documents and digital photographs are all on my computer. Before the battery lost all its power I copied a few E-mail addresses down on a piece of paper so I could still communicate with a few people using Ken`s machine. I only got a few and now I can no longer E-mail all the people I`ve been communicating with electronically for years.
If this next new adapter does not match then I will have little choice but to buy a whole new computer here. I doubt that I will be able to buy one with an English operating system, which means still more trouble.
I am beginning to hate that stupid cat