Chromebook unexpected demise

Another cool and cloudy day and a return to Monday morning household chores after breakfast. At last I got around to dealing with three months worth of unopened mail, sorting out the junk mail from routine newsletters bank statements, and occasional cards and letters. Much to recycle, some yet to file away. Car insurance renewal cost is fifty quid extra. We talk of getting rid of it, but life could be problematic without one, even though we don't use it much.

Then after lunch we did need to use it to get to back to back appointments with Kay our osteomyologist. I booked an appointment with her when I was still in Spain. Clare sent her a message early this morning and fortunately Kay was able to fit her in as well. Kay's house in Newport is at the top of the hill in St Julian's and it would take half a day to get there by public transport instead of a couple of hours. As ever, I found the treatment beneficial, except that I was tired when we got back, and ended up not going to Caerphilly to Emma's licensing as Ministry Area Leader. Whether by car, or by train or bus from the city centre, the trip would have required more energy than I had left, and pushing myself hard isn't a good idea after treatment. There was a message on the answering machine when I got back from John at Pidgeon's asking if I'd be free to take a funeral in three weeks time.

I went to use my Chromebook to check some data and found it was almost drained of power. I plugged it in and it displayed signs of a faulty power connection. I swapped the charger to a different socket, and then tried another charger of the same kind, but the same result, with the power indicator flashing and the screen brightness fluctuating in the way it does with a power supply fault. Both chargers worked perfectly with my other laptop. 

The only conclusion I could come to was that the input socket or the power regulator on the device motherboard is now broken. Once the battery drains, the Chromebook is dead. With only fifteen minutes charge left, I had to find out how to return the device to factory settings to remove all my accounts and data from it. I did it, but with very little time left to spare. I can take it to Davey at Tourotech and ask him to give it to his mate who recycles electronic waste. It came out of the factory in Taiwan in November 2018 and I bought it in June 2019, just under four years ago. It was a nice machine to use and of quality build - superficially. Owain is still using an seven year old Chromebook I bequeathed to him when I bought the Asus. Now I have to check out what's available of an equivalent specification.

After supper I watched the final couple of episodes of 'Those who kill', then completed work on the Morning Prayer video for Thursday and uploaded it to YouTube.