My shift key was broken.
I have an almost 20 years old IBM thinkpad, an x23, which once a very special friend gave to me as a gift when Lenovo still was IBM. He is an enormous spiritual person and very grounded, too. I still love him much for his Divinity.
Through all these years, the old thinkpad worked well with Windows XP I regularly re-installed when it got hacked. Luckily, my friend provided me with a ghost-shell on four CD's which contained all the necessary programms. This worked well through all these years - computers came, computers went – the thinkpad always stayed with me for rememberance reasons.
I tried to get a new shift key at e-bay and found one. They are rare, really rare due to the age of the thinkpad. The shift key I bought didn't work. It was half as age as my thinkpad was. This is what happens, when you're too young in life.
I looked for a whole keyboard for the thinkpad. I would have even accepted a Kisuaheli edition, if I only had found one. There were none. Then a hardware specialist for old thinkpads came into my life, offering me searching for a new keyboard and putting it in.
He gave up after a few weeks. He had searched the whole U.S., whole Europe, Asia and all around the planet for a keyboard – just couldn't find one of this stone-age.
My shift key still didn't work. And the fan suddenly gave up its existence after 20 years of rotating round and round, as we all do in life. I suddenly was in need of two ancient modules.
A week ago, I talked to my mom in the evening telling her how deeply I wanted that old thinkpad to work because of the good times my friend and I once had. And I sent a prayer to the Heavens above and to my Angels asking them for help.
Well. I'm currently installing an internet streaming studio. What role could an old computer with very little RAM, CPU-speed and Hard Disc Memory play, when it just wouldn't fit into nowadays hardware necessities?
So I pimped the thinkpad. I earlier bought the most possible RAM for this time, about 680 MB, a 80 GB HDD hard disc, an PCMCIA wireless connection to my WIFI, stuff like that. But it still was missing that shift key.
I changed the operating system from Windows XP first to MX Linux then to Linux Bodhi. Bodhi is the Sanskrit word for Enlightenment and I found that useful. Gate, gate, paragate. Parasamgate, bodhi svaha. Another good friend of mine suggested Linux to me and I'm quite comfortable with that. With this operating system aged computers still do a great job.
As I said, I was praying to my Angels for that fucking shift key. Now, the fan came additionally into my beggings.
After talking to my mom, I went to my room with the modern windows 10 streaming computers, I work with. Suddenly, an e-mail arrived, reaching me right in this very minute from a guy answering to my e-bay request offering me an old x23 thinkpad for 30,- €. I finally found my missing shift key.
This guy was a refugee from Syria and lived right 25 Kilometers away from me. The hardware specialist searched the whole planet for this damned shift key, found none – and there was a guy living 25 Km apart from me having one. This is how the Heavens work.
Moreover, he had TWO x23 thinkpads, which didn't really work. Both were broken.
As the Spice Girls used to sing in the Nineties „Two become One“ - I bought both thinkpads for 60,- €. I now had three broken stone-age thinkpads, but tons of shift keys.
On one of the Syrian thinkpads the graphics didn't work, the other one didn't even breathe.
So I watched some youtube videos in order what to do. Tonight, I went to work. With a kitchen knife and a screwdriver.
First, I changed the keyboard in the thinkpad my friend gave me and replaced the broken fan with the Syrian one. NOW, I finally had my missing shift key.
Second, I took the graphic card from one of the broken Syrian thinkpads into the other one.
It didn't work as wanted. The screen was still not ok.
Then I changed the displays of the two Syrian thinkpads, too.
Then, the display was finally working and I replaced the hard disc drive, the RAM memory and finally installed MX Linux on it.
On my continuing search, Heaven led me further to Linux Bodhi. Now, I have three IBM x23 thinkpads. Two working excellently with Linux Bodhi and one for repair purposes.
The fucking shift-key altogether costed 60,- € but brought two PERFECT working computers with it.
Now, I finally have a shift-key.
