LostCarPark's Journal

jamesb's Mum was in London for the weekend, and she kindly brought back my Psion. It's good to have it back again. I started writing something on the train. I'm not sure if it's going anywhere, but I got over 500 words written, so at least I can be doing something more productive than watching Lost on my train journeys.

Have also located leather case, which will hopefully protect it from befalling any nasty accidents.

In other news, I have my final Junior Achievement class tomorrow. Ispent this evening writing out certificates to give them at the end of tomorrow's class. I don't have to do very much for this class, as it's the teams presenting their work to the class. For some reason that makes me more nervous than the classes where I had a lot to do.

I'll report on how it goes tomorrow!

Well, actually it never left, it just hasn't been working for the last while.

It started to go horribly wrong in the middle of NaNoWriMo, last November. I was on the train typing, and I suddenly noticed the Z key wasn't working. That's not so big a problem, as quite a lot of English can be typed without using Z, and when I closed the case and opened it very carefully it seemed to be okay.

However, over the next few days this spread to neighbouring keys, and it took a number attempts of opening the case very gingerly to get it to behave. By the end of that week, the whole bottom row had stopped working, and no amount of fiddling would get it to work. I did toy with the idea of trying to compose the remainder of my novel to only use the remaining letters, but realistically my novel attempt was over. The hour each way on the train was a fairly critical part of my writing time, and with that gone, it was going to be a real struggle to find time to get much further with it.

With no working Psion, I have done very little creative writing in the last few months. That's a bit of a pain, but I have read several quite interesting books (both factual and fictional), made quite a lot of paper notes on a web project I'm working on, and watched quite a few TV programs on the small screen of my MP3 player that I'd been meaning to get around to. But I do rather miss the time I used to spend writing.

So, being in London this week, I asked lproven to show me a place he knows that specialises in Psion repairs. We arrived there early this afternoon, and were greeted by a friendly member of staff, and I explained what was wrong. In theory all that should have been required was a replacement cable to connect the keyboard to the processor and screen, but he said they'd replace the cable, put in a new keyboard, and replace the top part of the case as there were a couple of broken bits around the hinges. This would be covered by their standard service charge, which while a little expensive, was a fair bit cheaper than a new machine (or even a working second-hand one).

I thought I'd have to come back later today or even tommorrow to pick it up, but he took it away to work on it, and within about half an hour or so, it was back and good-as-new. I scrounged together the money to pay for it and headed off to the tram, a happy camper.

I have a couple of other broken Psions that I'm now thinking it would be well worth my while bringing over next time I'm in London (although they'll require a slightly more expensive job as they have cracked screens).

From now on, though I'll be taking better care of my Psion, as I'd like to keep it working as long as possible. I've had a tendency to throw it in a pocket in the past, which possibly subjects it to more knocks than is wise. From now on it will be stored in a proper case (I have a leather one at home) and carried in my bag rather.

Now I'm looking forward to getting some real writing done on it.