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			<h1>Broken computer</h1>
			<p>Day 00469: Saturday, 2016 June 18</p>
		</header>
<p>
	The teachers at my mother&apos;s school are grouped into teams of people that are supposed to support each other, each composed of teachers of a specific grade level.
	My mother constantly complains that her team hasn&apos;t given my mother their telephone numbers.
	I&apos;ve asked about this in the past, and my mother has never asked for their telephone numbers, they&apos;ve just expected the other teachers to volunteer them.
	Furthermore, my mother has all of their email addresses, so it&apos;s not like they can&apos;t be reached.
	My mother&apos;s a bit obsessed with telephones though, which is part of where I get my own distaste for them.
	Today, I finally worked the final question that&apos;s been haunting me into the conversation in a non-accusatory way: has my mother ever offered these people <strong>*their*</strong> telephone number? As it turns out, no, no they have not.
	My mother expects these other teachers to volunteer extra contact information without actually offering contact information themself.
	Sure, that&apos;s not one-sided or anything.
	It&apos;s true that a lot of the teachers have given each other their telephone numbers, but it&apos;s also true that a lot of these teachers have known each other for years and are good friends.
	They likely have each other&apos;s telephone numbers because of off-the-clock interactions.
	These people don&apos;t necessarily even think to try to reach my mother outside of email; if my mother wanted to establish an extra line of communication using the telephone system, my mother should be the one to reach out and offer their number first.
	Most likely, the other teachers would respond by handing over their own telephone numbers in kind.
	However, my mother somehow thinks that it&apos;s not their own place to do the reaching out, but somehow is the other teachers&apos; responsibility.
</p>
<p>
	My mother was about to head out without me, so I started gathering my stuff to go as quickly as I could.
	They said that if I came along, it&apos;d be as likely that I&apos;d actually be able to help as that I&apos;d instead end up sitting there bored.
	Wanting to be there in case any help was needed, I came along anyway, but I made sure to bring <a href="/en/domains/newdawn.local.xhtml">my laptop</a>.
	First, we ended up hitting up some yard sales, and at one of them, we found some kitchen knives for a dime each.
	Some of these were very nice knives though.
	We picked up two that had originally come from one of the dollar discount stores.
	They originally came in a pack of seven for a dollar, but they&apos;re the best knives that I&apos;ve ever used.
	Seriously.
	I&apos;m not sure why such quality knives were ever sold so cheaply, but we always buy more whenever we find them second hand.
	We don&apos;t see them in-store any more (I&apos;ve never seen them in-store, that&apos;s how old these things are), but they hold up with age very well and cut fantastically.
	Next week, we plan to hold our own sale again to try to rid ourselves of more junk.
</p>
<p>
	Once at the school, I predictably didn&apos;t have anything to do, so I tried starting my laptop.
	That didn&apos;t go well at all.
	Simply plugging <code>newdawn.local.</code> into the wall caused it to go into a strange restart loop in which it wouldn&apos;t turn on long enough to even reach the <abbr title="Basic Input/Output System">BIOS</abbr> booting screen before shutting off and starting again.
	It&apos;d just been functioning before I left home! After working the machine over frustrated for a bit, I found that the power supply jack seemed to be pushed in a bit far.
	Was an improper connection to the charger cord causing the problem? Dismantling my laptop, I found that the power supply jack was indeed out of place; the thin plastic walls holding the jack against the outside of the shell were broken.
	Hopefully, I&apos;d found the issue.
	Getting decent access to the problem spot required further dismantling though, so I continued taking things apart.
	Due to putting pressure on the wrong part of a connector while disconnecting the electronic components, I broke the connector responsible for making my touchpad work! That was frustrating.
	I also found that the fan was packed with dust, so I cleaned that out while I had the machine open.
	I went looking for my mother to ask if the school had any electrical tape that they leave lying around, but instead found Mary-Margaret, so I asked them instead.
	Mary-Margaret lent me their own electrical tape instead! With electrical tape in hand, I bound the power supply jack back into place as best as I could, then started putting the machine back together.
	I also noted that my <abbr title="random-access memory">RAM</abbr> slots were full while the machine was open; I&apos;d wondered if I could pack any more <abbr title="random-access memory">RAM</abbr> into it a while back, as I have many sticks of miscellaneous <abbr title="random-access memory">RAM</abbr> types lying around.
	Sadly, I forgot to take note of which of the two wires attached to which spot on what I believe is the Wi-Fi card, but my first guess worked.
	I&apos;m not sure if both options would have functioned, but I was too tired to test the other option when the first was doing what I needed it to.
	I&apos;d spent several hours trying to fix my machine, so I was ready to be done with it.
	Likewise, I&apos;d used up all of my free time.
	With the laptop fixed, it was time to start loading the van.
</p>
<p>
	We headed to the hills to search for bullet shells.
	We found many, along with a dead porcupine.
	It didn&apos;t look like the porcupine had been shot, so it probably just died of natural causes.
	My mother loves parts of dead things though, so they pulled off several hairs and quills.
	They said they&apos;d cook them to kill off any dangerous bacteria, then use them for education, allowing students to see what porcupine hair and quills look like.
	In particular, it sounds like they want to show how sharp the quills are and that the hair is multicolored.
	We were too tired to unload when we got home, so we&apos;ll do that tomorrow morning.
</p>
<p>
	My laptop&apos;s doing better than before it broke! Specifically, it doesn&apos;t seem to overheat any more.
	The fan being full of junk was no doubt hard on it, so I should remember to open my laptop and clean out the fan again next time that it starts to overheat instead of assuming that the laptop&apos;s just old.
	Does this mean that <a href="/en/domains/thinkpad-x60s.local.xhtml"><code>thinkpad-x60s.local.</code></a> should be just fine then? I replaced the fan, but perhaps all it needed was a good fan cleaning.
	I think I cleaned the new fan before installing it, so maybe the clean fan will keep it cool enough to keep it from shutting off.
	Unfortunately, my mobile&apos;s health has gone down.
	Not only is my mobile unable to read Ext4 and loosing files on <abbr title="File Allocation Table">FAT</abbr>, it&apos;s now also claiming that my <abbr title="File Allocation Table">FAT</abbr> <abbr title="Secure Digital">SD</abbr> card is blank or nonexistent.
	This is ridiculous.
	Why has my mobile suddenly started failing on me recently?
</p>
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