Sue

The person who started the previous thread I linked to said they were Greek, so I presume would be well aware of cultural nuances. The absolute kindest thing I can think of is that whoever started the shop (and I believe there are several shops) was not aware of the meaning of the name. But surely you would not just pluck a name for a new business out of the air? Surely you would make sure it did not have any possible negative connotations, in any language? Has anybody actually asked the shop about this? As regards this "vegan hot chocolate", I'm bemused. The chocolate powder itself was surely just cocoa and sugar? It doesn't normally have any animal related products in it, does it? So it must have been the milk which made it "vegan", so probably either oat milk or soya milk? I regularly make hot chocolate with oat milk, and occasionally have it when out. It has never occurred to me to call it "vegan" (I'm not a vegan), and I've never seen it described as "vegan". When I'm out I just ask for hot chocolate with oat milk. It obviously doesn't taste the same as when made with cow's milk, but I prefer the taste. I don't particularly like drinks made with soya milk, which in any case curdles in certain hot drinks, but most places give you a choice of milk?

Good news! A friend with techie knowledge was able to get into the laptop (not physically) and I've now saved the recent unbacked up data onto an external hard drive (and I won't be making that mistake again). Remarkably, whatever he did caused the screen to spring back to life, and I can actually now do things on the laptop. However it is in safe mode, and my friend said not to take it out of safe mode or turn it off, in case I can't get back into it again. Because I don't know what the problem was in the first place which caused the sudden total and persistent screen blackout, I am worried that the same thing may happen again. I phoned Which Tech, as they will now be able to connect to it remotely as they will be able to see the screen, but they don't have an appointment for a week. I also phoned John Lewis again, but they still rabbited on about a factory reset always being "highly recommended" 🙄 presumably because that's what wherever they send laptops to be repaired always does first. Is there any easy way (without potentially making things worse again) to look into the laptop history to identify what happened last Monday around 3pm?!

They were never intended for commercial use. If they were to be used by small businesses, who would decide which of the many such businesses round here could use them? And what would be the criteria? And would those businesses then have precedence over the non profit organisations who wanted to use them? What has East Dulwich become, if that is the case? ETA: There has been a great deal of editing on this thread, and removal of whole posts, or large parts of them. Plus in at least one case, the editing seems to have resulted in a question being asked of one person being answered by another person as if the question had been directed at them. This is all making things very confusing. If you can't stand by what you have posted, maybe think twice before posting it in the first place? I could understand this happening occasionally, but there have been several incidents recently, and it seems a bit pointless trying to have a discussion on what is supposed to be a forum if people just go back and remove the posts which other people are responding to, with no explanation?

The thread I linked to above explains the background, and that the cake was apparently named AFTER the shop was named. Arapina is a racist slur in Greek, and was not originally the name for a cake (let alone a chocolate cake, if that is what the cake in question is. If that is indeed the case, my reaction is unprintable but starts with WTF 😮)

Jellybeanz has edited their long post which included their negative assumptions about you. Luckily for them, nobody had actually quoted some of Jellybeanz' posts on here in their own posts, and they have edited more than one of them, so they have disappeared for ever.

Pleased to see that the original very long and very negative post starting this thread has been edited down to one sentence 😂

Something you have to pay for isn't actually a "blog", is it?

Oh come on jazzer, it was funny. It amused me, anyway 😃

Might you be better just buying a new microwave?! 😀

Someone is going to have a look at it for me who thinks there is something else he can try to boot it up and at least diagnose the problem and get the recent data off without removing any screws, thanks. I had already had a long conversation with someone from Which Tech who seemed to know what he was talking about, before I took it up to John Lewis.

Sadly neither the F1 nor the enter key worked. Still a black screen. I tried both several times. And the red facial recognition light which used to flash at the top of the screen doesn't come on any more either (it was previously, even with the black screen). I think I've probably reached the end of the road with what I can try without physically going inside the laptop? Thanks so much for your help though, it's much appreciated.

It's a bit of a faff to sign up to it 🙄

I had what was at the time the worst meal of my life there. Superseded (sp?) by another one locally the Christmas just gone, but that's another sad and much worse saga.

Crikey, well that must be the first time in decades!

Well at least it's better than leaving the poo on the pavement.

Substack is what many people are using these days. It was explained in the post above!

Too late now, but when I had a problem with a window which stuck open either my insurance or my rescue service (I think it must have been) put the car into a secure enclosure somewhere overnight prior to arranging for it to be fixed. However it might be different if it's due to vandalism.

Also the food is terrible, if someone was intending to eat there .......

Haven't tried yet, sorry, wasn't feeling on top form, going to look at it tomorrow morning (Saturday). AKA this afternoon (Saturday) , having got up late.

Maybe better not to encourage them. They might go away.

Thanks Vladi, I will try this. I was very unimpressed by the John Lewis tech attempts, but unfortunately not surprised. However whatever I do, the outcome is likely to be that whatever is wrong it will need repairing, and as the laptop is under guarantee I don't want to do anything which could invalidate the guarantee, as something else could go wrong once this is fixed (it's a two year guarantee). The thing that most annoys me about the way they go about things is just starting off with a factory reset. It's not just losing the data, it's having to reinstall everything that was on there, and reset all the settings etc 🤬 It just seems a lazy way forward to me. At least I have only lost recent data, all my historic data is backed up on Carbonite, albeit mostly duplicated. Carbonite say they have no way of accessing my laptop under the circumstances. Stable doors and bolting horses, but I am presently putting all the stuff from my old Dell laptop onto the external hard drive, just as a precaution in case I somehow lose the Carbonite backup. The Dell still works, just mostly very very slowly, but randomly speeds up 🤣

"The community" is all of us. Are you volunteering to take this task on?

The Oxfam shop refusal may be because they have very limited storage space at the back of their very small shop?

I have always taken mine to the main St Christopher's shop, in a bin bag clearly marked "Rags". They have always accepted them. Clean items only, obviously.

However I don't understand how I could check if the SSD is detected without being able to see anything on the screen? Or how I could run any diagnostic tools without being able to see anything on the screen?