My laptop screen, which started getting wonky yesterday, waxes and wanes. Overall, though, it’s getting worse. I’ve been in touch with Framework who are diagnosing the problem, but that means they want me to disassemble the machine and take pictures. Disassembly is really easy — they even included the only tool you need to do it. Unfortunately, that tool hasn’t yet been unpacked from our journey to the island. I’m 95% certain I know which box it’s in, but before I could dig it out HA returned from a trip to the post office with a parcel. I week or so ago I had ordered an iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit. It included the necessary T-5 Torx bit so it saved me a deep dive in a big box for a little screwdriver. Disassembling the machine, cleaning some light dust and Luna fur out of it, and re-seating the display connector did nothing to resolve the problem. I got some good pictures, but I’m increasingly convinced that the fix is going to be a new display.
The good news is that it takes about 15 minutes to install the new display, and it will only cost $159 — a far cry from the many hundreds of dollars I’ve paid for laptop displays in the past. The question is how long it will take to ship here. We’ll see.
The catchment water tank and pump are working well. In the middle of the night I had an idea about how to tighten the fittings without owning a huge wrench and I thought about using a bar clamp. By itself it didn’t work, but coupled with a pipe wrench to turn the attached ball valve, I was able to tighten it a lot.
Unfortunately, I’ve tightened it as much as I dare and it’s still dripping a bit. It’s a small drip, so I might just have to live with it a while.
HA also took the long drive into town to pick up the gutters, but the store gave her not gutters but, I think, downspouts. Whatever they are, they absolutely won’t work as gutters. Weirdly, they gave her the connectors, hangers, and endplates to fit real gutters but won’t do much of anything for the rectangular tubes they gave us in place of guttering. So it will be another hour-long round trip in the diesel truck to return the worthless “gutters.”
I decided to try painting the deck again. I thought that if it got rained on again, I’d be helping alleviate the drought conditions here. If not, I’d be closer to having my hot tub. It stayed nice and sunny for more than long enough to dry the paint.
By tomorrow afternoon, it should be ready for me to mount and fill the tub. That will be exciting. And relaxing.
So slow progress is being made.
—2p