One Day's Issues.

It was another one of those days today. Every day seems to be one of those days these days. Sounds poetic, doesn’t it?

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The engineer came to address my concerns over the new fridge freezer. It seems they were groundless. Modern fridge freezers are supposed to make that curious popping sound when the motor switches on and off. It’s to do with the way thermostats operate now. And they’re supposed to run for three or four hours at a time, instead of the forty minutes my old one was content with. That’s all to do with the coolant being fed through the bigger freezer compartments first. And the freezer drawers are supposed to be a bit erratic in their temperature variations because the thermostat works entirely from the fridge compartment on the ‘affordable’ models. (£220 isn’t exactly what I call affordable, but I take the point.)

So, having considered the evidence, the engineer announced his verdict: ‘I find no fault with this man machine,’ and off he went. I was just about to shout ‘Welease Bwian,’ when I noticed a screw head on the floor by the front of the machine. Just a head, you understand; the shank is still lodged in the body of the machine. The screw is broken. Long story short:

a) The screw is important, or it could be a little way down the line (probably the week after the warranty expires.)

b) It isn’t simply a matter of replacing a screw – there’s the broken shank to be considered, so it’s a bit more involved than it looks.

c) The engineer will have to come back.

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After that, I had a little computer problem, and here’s some advice:

If you’re using the little nozzle on the vacuum cleaner to pick up bits of stuff from the desk, make sure the computer is switched off if you intend to run it along the keyboard. If you don’t, you see, you run the risk of touching one of those keys that Do Things. I did, and my browser switched to full screen. Once that happens, every bit of control mechanism disappears (all apart from the Start menu) and the only way to make it appear again is to know which magic key to press, which I didn’t. Simply re-booting the machine doesn’t make any difference. I thought of a way, and it’s this:

First you have to click Start and go into another browser (opening another copy of Firefox, which I was using, didn’t work, although it might for you since technology probably likes you more than it likes me. I opened Explorer.) Go to Google and search ‘Firefox control keys.’ Open the first website it returns and click on ‘miscellaneous,’ then look for ‘toggle full screen.’ Next to ‘toggle full screen’ it says F11. Right, getting there. Return to the offending browser and press F11. Voila, you’re now up and running again.

Got that? Good. I had to work it out with a brain that just wants to go to sleep and pretend it’s sitting by a placid lake somewhere with somebody nice. Aren’t you lucky to be the beneficiary of my ailing brain?

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And then there were other issues, but I’m bored now.