On the Domstic Front
As a character-growth exercise, I left to Child the option of collecting and hoarding all coin he could find in teh house. This also doubled as a really *great* clean-up-places inducement--"ooh! money there! Go look! And pick up that stuff just to make sure you don't miss anything. Maybe the place it belongs has money too!" And sometimes, this even works.
Child, at the time of this annoucement, was blissfully unaware of the actual value of his collection, so the pennies ("I like the color.") piled up in, let us say, drifts in a multitude of hiding places throughout the house. Drifts that one might trip over and *really* hurt your foot on. A lot.
Then there was School, and the study of Money, and the Value Thereof. Boy, did that piss me off. No longer could Child be entertained with piles of pennies. Oh, no. He's out for *quarters*.
Now, when I said that he could have any coins he found lying around, I was blissfully unaware of what Chld considered "lying around". These places became my jeans, my coin jar, and most lately, my purse, where with complete unself-consciousness he will remove *anything* shiny and check later for actual monetary value. Other people's pockets, sometimes when they are still wearing the clothes in question, became fair game. One's hand, when one is getting a soda? Also thus. Pretty much, my child is slowly becoming kind of scary, but with lucrative results--he pulled out some of his hidden stores, set himself down, and worked out he has quite a bit. I said "savings!"
He looked at me like I'd just blasphemed against Teen Titans.
Yeah, he's eight, I forgot.
On the Technical Front
It took me two and a half hours to get my DVDR in.
The real humiliation of this is that I was reading the box, which had stickers all over it about how a trained personnel person of Best Buy would so install it for me if I needed the help, and my mind offered up many a sarcastic comment at the very thought I would need *anyone's* help handling a computer case and a screwdriver, 'cause after Adventures with Brother In Law's Upgrades, no one, and I repeat this, no one upgrades, downgrades, grades my computer but me. Which, yes, epically stupid, for those of you who have been reading me long enough to remember Jenn's Family's Study of the Vacuum of a Television Trying to Fix the Fuses On Our Own (And Ooh! It Has a Radiation Warning! How Cool!) and Jenn and the VCR That She Kept Plugged In While Stabbing With a Screwdriver, but I have uncanny luck with not getting electrocuted and not causing permanent damage to anything so far, so. That is The Rule.
Dell cases are *made* to be eay to get off, and they are--all you need is to look at the diagram so you know where the catches are that easily slip it off. Ah, but I could not find my books, of course--the one time I need them, they are doubtless packed up in something somewhere, mocking me, and I got the side cover off and two screws loosened, but could not *could not* get that front cover off. Later, I discovered all I needed was the grey part of the front cover off, but that's for later.
An hour of searching, a screwdrvier, and some computer rage later, while trying not to scratch my motherboard into oblivion, I came upon a catch and pulled with all my might, thinking, this is it!
And it was. And I snapped the other clever, easy to slip off catch.
Mmm. Yeah.
Well, got Mr DVDR in and tried to put the front cover back *on*.
Oh, how that didn't work.
Now, strange note--the cover was not wide enough, even in the wide top bay. Becuase the DVD player's slide goes all the way across the front, not just across most of the front, and the case didn't like that at all. So I played with it, discovered the grey part came off, and jerked that off--surprisingly, without breaking anything. I think. Turning your computer on and off with a screwdriver shoved deep into a hole in the middle of one's computer is not only creepily subtextual, considering my major hobby on this thing, but also, I have heard, somewhat dangerous, but hey, I dealt with it.
Okay, I tried to shave down the sides with kitchen sheers, but let's not go there.
Cue to today, whilst I searched the house for something sharp or something hot--let's just all breathe a sigh of relief that my sister's old sautering (soldering? How *do* you spell that?) set isn't around anymore or amateur nightmares would be the theme of the night. Eventually, I came across a Super Exacto Knife of Doom, fit to commit murder or shave down recalcitrant comptuer fronts. My sister and her husband took it from me on the grounds that they were my direct heirs for Care and Feeding of Child and my insurance isn't mature enough to give them enough money to make it worth the effort. So, all's well that ends well. Mostly.
Also, I love my new headphones. They have a wonderous dampening effect on outside noise, which is convenient when Child and Niece are screaming at the top of their marvelously developed lungs. Mmm. Peace.
Done now. I'm full fo the spirit of happy satisfaction, even though the Super Exacto Knife of Doom is hidden again, and, not that I looked or anything, but seems to be in a Very Secret Place. Dammit. I could do some *fun things* with some of my possessions with that.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
