Technical issues

I blame part of my lack of posting on computer issues, which were supposed to be solved yesterday. My laptop has been having issues with charging and running on AC power, so I've been babying it and trying to get as much real work done on the battery life as possible. Yesterday was the scheduled service day for a technician to come replace the motherboard (since that is where the power connection is). Surprisingly, the connection had finally given up the ghost 3 days before the warranty expired, so it was being repaired free of charge.

Tech shows up, parts in hand and proceeds to tear the laptop into a hundred tiny screws and plastic pieces. Swaps the board out and begins reassembly. Here is where things went wrong. He had to remove the keyboard off the top to get to some other pieces, and when he goes to put it back, I hear a "hmmm" noise. I head over and see him holding some tiny plastic pieces and trying to put them back onto a connector. No dice, the plastic connector that links the keyboard to the rest of the computer is broken beyond repair.

He calls the company and asks them to send a new keyboard. They tell him my machine is now out of warranty and I'll have to pay for it or the service company will. I manage not to blow a gasket as he calls his supervisor and gets told that the service company isn't paying for a keyboard and I have to take it up with the company myself. Approximately 1/2 second after the tech leaves, I'm on the technical support chat trying to type without punching the keys so hard that I break my external keyboard too. The company tells me that there is a keyboard on order, billed to the tech, and they'll be in touch to replace it.

So now, I have to wait another week for the part to arrive and service to be scheduled before I can use my laptop as a laptop. I'm hoping the service group doesn't procrastinate just because they got billed. Until then, the laptop is permanently mounted to my desk.