Dim Bulb

This may come as a surprise, but there are times when I am not the brightest guy in the room.

Usually, in my house, I am, simply because I'm usually the only guy in the room. But not always. For example: two or three years ago, I had an eye exam by an opthamologist. For the first time since I'd been having them, he said -- quite casually, on his way out the door -- that he was seeing some deterioration inside one of my eyes. Well, I freaked right out -- quietly, but I did. Am I going to go blind, I wondered. So, I did the only logical thing: I ignored it. I didn't have an exam with him or any other opthamologist since then. About a month ago, I was seeing the general practice nurse, and she remarked that it had been a while, and I really ought to have my eyes checked. Ah, crap. So I did a web search for Premier Eye, which is the place I'd gone to, and inadvertantly came to the web site of Premiere Eye, which is out in Iowa or someplace. And I read on their site that the most common problem people like me have is that you start to get bleeding inside the eye -- and this can be addressed by a fairly quick laser technique. I told my wife, and she said yeah, she knew that. Geez -- I didn't know! So now I have an appointment to see one of the local people -- same practice, different doc, because I don't like doorway diagnoses -- and we'll see what happens. Maybe I won't go blind, hmmm?

We were talking about the trip, and said that we wanted to bring this laptop. I had bought an iGo power adapter for the other laptop, and I wanted to see if it would work with this one. Well - maybe. After much futzing around, we found a 'tip' that plugs into the power socket on this laptop, and the cord, of course, plugs into the power brick -- but when I started the PC, it said that there was an 'unknown' power adapter, and I notice that the charged amount isn't changing, up or down. If I pull the adapter, it says '37%' -- and with the regular adapter, it'll say that even if the cord is plugged in. This one, it just says 'AC Power'. So I have this odd feeling that it isn't really charging. I just hope I'm not slowly killing the power system.

We've started Loading Up The Van. Oh, my goodness, we're gonna give the shocks a workout for sure!
==========
Update:
Bad news: the 'power tip' for the iGo was the wrong kind. It was supplying AC power, but it was not charging the battery, and might have been damaging it.
Good news: when we got this laptop, we ordered the car power adapter (which I'd forgotten about), and it works just fine. Yes!