Monday, February 2, 2026, Orlando, Florida
Hi, everyone.
Today has been… a day. My Lenovo Idea Centre all‑in‑one decided it had had enough of this mortal coil and tapped out this morning. The machine is only three or four years old, and it had been behaving well enough — except for the increasingly stubborn power button. For the past few days, I’ve had to coax it awake with two or three attempts, so I’d resorted to leaving it in sleep mode overnight. That trick worked… until it didn’t.
Thankfully, I own a couple of backup laptops that mostly gather dust, so I fired one up and did some troubleshooting with help from Microsoft’s Copilot app. Based on the symptoms, it looks like the computer itself is fine — it’s the power adapter that’s gone kaput. I ordered a replacement on Amazon, and it should arrive sometime between Wednesday and Friday. Thanks to my Amazon Rewards points, the damage to my Visa card was a grand total of $1.31, which is probably the only bright spot in this saga.
The real downside is that all my Kindle Create files for The Jim Garraty Chronicles omnibus live on the main machine. I can still work in Microsoft Word on this laptop — all the Garratyverse manuscripts are safely backed up and accessible — but Kindle Create is another story. I could start fresh project files here… but that would mean redoing all the subheads in the omnibus from scratch, and I’m not eager to relive that circle of formatting hell. So, the Chronicles will have to wait until the new power brick arrives.
Image Credit: Juan Carlos Hernandez
In the meantime, a quick reminder: the Kindle edition of Reunion: Coda is on sale for $1.99 through February 8. If you’ve been meaning to pick it up — or know someone who might enjoy it — now’s a great time.
More soon, hopefully with a fully revived main computer and fewer technological tantrums.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
Comments
4 responses to “A Maddening Monday”
Sorry about the laptop. I am glad you had a backup.
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It’s the desktop PC that’s having issues. The new power supply shipped yesterday, but it won’t be here for a few days.
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Oh the desktop. I haven’t had a desktop in a while.
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Great that you have those rewards, because a power supply for $1.31 is pretty sweet. My desktop computer is on its last leg, so I’m about to swap it for a new one this afternoon. It lasted me almost 10 years, so I can’t complain too much.
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