beset me recently. I thought it would be a great gag to drop my coat
instead of hanging it up, and it wasn't that big of a joke. To add
insult to injury, there was a pen in the breast pocket, where iPaq
was, and the fall applied just the right amount of pressure to crack
the screen. Needless to say I was not happy to find a white screen
puncuated with black snowflakes along the cracks. It was truly a sad
sight.
Usually when a touch screen cracks, that's the end of it. The cost to
replace the touch screen is on par with replacing the unit itself,
especially since my PDA is an iPaq 3950 running Windows Mobile 2003.
Quaint, I know, but it works, or rather did until I broke the screen.
But my beloved wife put two and two together and fixed it. Yes, SHE
fixed it. About a year and a half ago, I had another iPaq 3950 which
was giving me grief. One day, the touch screen just stopped
responding. I couldn't figure out why, but it did. I purchased a set
of hex screwdrivers, took it apart, and attempted to fix it. My
efforts ended up bricking the unit, and I just gave it to my daughter
to play with. A few weeks later, a replacement arrived, and all was
well, until I cracked the screen a couple of weeks ago. Caitlin had
the notion that if the other unit was the exact same, and the screen
was still intact, there was no reason why she shouldn't be able to
switch out the screens. So, she got the bricked unit, the damaged
unit, and the hex screwdrivers and went to work. Twenty minutes
later, iPaq was up and running again! I did not give her any
direction, nor did I supervise her because we were entertaining guests
at the time. I have to admit, seeing my wife sucessfully repair a PDA
was entertainment enough for me!
The only problem with the restored iPaq, was that all information that
was on the main memory previously was lost. All programs, all files,
aside from basic Windows OS files and programs were gone.
Not really a big deal. I had to do some online research to find the
drivers and programs that I used previously, but they were pretty easy
to find. YanCEyware, TCPMP, and the foldable keyboard driver were the
easiest to find. Another program I tried to find was pPod. That was
a fun emulator that turned iPaq into an iPod. Second Generation UI
but it was really cool. Instead, I found PocketMusic, and that has a
bit of an iTouch feel to it. Quite snazzy!
But the tricky one was for my Wifi card. Turned over some rocks here
and there, and I finally found it, and it's working brilliantly! I am
very impressed with how well the keyboard responds, and I think that
is in large part because of the available memory on the unit now.
It's not bogged down with a bunch on GPS maps that I never use. In
fact I never used the GPS maps since I didn't have a receiver!
Whoo! Ok, that's enough tech talk.
I'm relieved, yet a little broke up that the play is over now. Feels
like we just opened, and then it's done. Well, I'm not that far off,
because we only did two performances, the shortest run in any
performance I've participated in with the Beaumont Drama Society. We
usually do four performances, or three at the very least, but we only
did two this time around, which is a bit of a shame, because that
would be have been great to do again. Though I don't know how many
times I could have tolerated seeing Drew in drag. Twice was two times
too many.
I suppose I'll never know, but the two show we did were absolutely
great! I got a good crowd response for my choice of tunes on the
glockenspiel. I paid respect to the classics with redidtions of Swan
Lake, Beethoven's 5th, the Zelda overland theme, and I even hashed out
Final Fantasy. I could hear some pretty hearty cheering when I played
Zelda. :)
We will be starting up production again with Oscar come January, so
life will continue to be interesting.
