so, my laptop went at the beginning of may. i might still be able to fix it, but it's going to be of reduced value to me because i'm probably going to lose the microphone (which is in the screen). if you take the microphone out, the only other benefit of fixing it is that the board is expandable to 16 gb of ram. the board on the backup laptop is only good for 4 gb, which is a low limit for 2017. right now, i'm scraping by with 2.

the other day, i had to send an email to my maternal grandmother - a septuagenarian with an impressive stock portfolio and an ottawa construction magnate millionaire very longterm boyfriend - explaining that i couldn't call her back because i don't have a microphone in my backup laptop. i'll either have to find a way to fix my board, or get a microphone, and there's nothing i can do until then.

so, she's going to send me a check for a new laptop so i can call her over google voice.

thanks nana :)