Sorry I Can't Get My Camera To Focus.

Dana.
Last year, I borrowed a laptop through the NaNo lenders program, and became very friendly with the Neo. It was the best ever. I loved having something I could put on my lap and type with anywhere and everywhere.

So, when NaNo told me they don’t lend to the same person two years in a row, I knew I had to buy one from somewhere. And then I saw what Vance Fry did to his. Woowee. I wanted a red one too!

So, I won a Dana on ebay, bought some spray paint, and decided to give it a go.
This is what Dana looked like before:

Day 1
I woke up bright and early on a Saturday morning, and decided to take it apart and spray it up on the roof before work.

The back screws were easy enough to undo. But when I opened up her shell, my first thought was, “I can’t do this.” There was an intimidating looking circuit board, a ribbon, a part under that, a free floating, weird-looking battery. It was all attached to the part I wanted to spray.

After staring it down for about five minutes, I went to work on the easy part – loosening the internal screws. Thank god for the Ikea pencil case with all the different compartments, so I could keep track of what screw went where. I loosened the circuit board, and then the underlying screen, figured out how to take out the battery compartments, I finally got the keyboard ribbon off.

My Dana was now a shell that I could do with as I wished.

Except it was too close to going to work time. I would continue the next morning.

Day 2
Woke early. Washed Dana with soap and water as recommended. Along with the goggles and spray paint, I also bought a respirator mask But, when I opened it, the instructions, on full page paper in tiny tiny print, looked much too daunting. “Screw the mask” I thought. I would try to breathe in another direction.
Took her up to the roof and laid down some newspaper. I am lucky in my positioning. When I put on the large rubber kitchen gloves and started spraying, the vinyl dye flew on the wind…away from me, thank goodness. It took a while to get it covered. I sprayed too much, actually, it hung off the chassis in drips. I figured it would be okay, though. I let her stay there for forty five minutes to dry before bringing her back downstairs.

Later that night I noticed that there were parts sprayed unevenly, and I could still see the logo through the red.

Day 3
The next morning I took her out for another coat. Handling the spray paint can went a lot smoother. It was clear there would be a few imperfections where the drips had collected, but I decided to not get bent out of shape about that.

Day 4
I let her dry.

Day 5
I let her dry all of day 4, and couldn’t resist trying to put her back together on Day 5. I started with the keyboard, by far the most difficult thing I had to do. I think the dye collected in the slots made this more difficult than it should have been. I scratched the paint in a couple of places and decided I couldn’t live with that, so I put newspaper in my kitchen sink and gave the spots a couple of hits from the dye can.

After letting it dry for a couple of hours, I struggled with fitting the keyboard into the chassis for another hour. It still doesn’t fit perfectly into the slots, I feel like it might pop out at anytime. Momentary panic when the control key popped off. After staring the internal key mechanism down and fiddling with it, I finally got it back onto the keyboard.

Putting it together after that was no problem at all. There are serious imperfections in the paint job, there are a couple of scratches and dents. But that’s okay, the desired effect was achieved. It works, and I think I’ve figured out how to sync it up with my computer. Here she is:



Not as super sharp as Vance's but I'm happy with my work and can't wait to take her out into the world.

And, the NaNo mugs are red this year. Can’t wait to take a pic of them together.





Gnome.
This is my NaNo07 totem, my garden gnome. The wife of the engineer who mixed my record gave him to me for my birthday. She said every die hard anglophile must have a garden gnome, and I agree with her. I love him. He’s so…amazingly benevolent. He sits on my desk and wishes me well as I go about my life, especially when I’m noveling.




Chair.
This is my new executive leather desk chair.

*Love* my chair, boys and girls.

The chair that preceded was a hideous plastic thing that I couldn’t sit in without feeling my butt bones. There was no way on god’s green earth I could do 24 hours of high powered noveling in that thing. So, I went to Staples and bought this comfie chair. They assembled it and delivered it up four flights of stairs. And now I feel like I’m sitting on clouds.

The challenge will be to keep my cats from scratching it up. Right now I’m keeping it covered with a big sheet. And I’m planning on purchasing a water pistol if they get a little too naughty.

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