Post rumblings

My recent medical difficulty knocked more out of me than I suspected. I have been mired neck-deep in lethargy for the last three weeks, with just enough vim or zorch to go about getting the various tests and pokings and proddings that the doctors ordered.

I still have not repaired my keyboard, since, to my dismay, that turns out to be a hugely expensive procedure. The keyboard on a unibody Macbook Pro is an integral part of the top case assembly and cannot be replaced without it. But because my machine has a dent or wow where it fell downstairs with me last year, if I remove the top half of the case, the bottom half will go spung and the two pieces will never fit back together again. (I have had this happen before.) So I will have to replace both halves of the case – and Apple charges something like $300 each for the new parts. I can get them a lot cheaper on eBay, but so far I have not done so, partly because I don’t want to spend the money (which is reserved for cover art), and partly because of the aforementioned shortage of zorch or vim.

I did, however, find an antique USB keyboard, or the nearest thing to one, tucked away in one of the multitude of boxes cluttering my spare room. This keyboard came with the Bondi blue iMac that I bought for my father’s use way back in the late 1990s or thereabouts, which I still have packed away somewhere. (I think I even have the horrible hockey-puck mouse.) The cheap keyboard that I tried to use was not much good, partly because the keys were of very poor quality, and rattled about like Chiclets in a half-full Chiclet box whenever I used it, but chiefly because the dent or wow means that the keyboard will not sit flat on top of my machine (the only place where I can use it comfortably). When I type on it, the pressure causes it to mash on keys on the built-in keyboard underneath, and I wind up typing Zs and spaces and other unwanted things in between all the characters I actually intend to type. But the USB keyboard is heavy and sturdy, and nothing gets through it.

What I have not done, through all this kerfuffle, is work. I did, it is true, make up a cover for the POD version of Lord Talon’s Revenge, which I intend to correct and upload to CreateSpace shortly. But I have scarcely tried to write anything until now. Partly I have been afraid that my jury-rigged keyboard setup would not stand up under any heavy work; partly I have just been bone idle and depressed in the wake of my illness. So tonight I am trying whether I can work, and whether the keyboard works when I do. Stay tuned to this channel.