Snow cripples the UK and first steps along my repair.

If you have been following my blog, you would know that yesterday I posted about my plans to replace the cracked screen on my Microsoft Surface Pro 3. I ordered the parts and tools on Amazon Prime, and they were scheduled to be delivered today. This is what I woke up to.

Not too bad, right? A little dusting of snow. Shortly after packing the kids off to school however, it turned into this.

Throughout the morning it got steadily worse. Yet according to Amazon, my deliveries would still land today. Shortly after lunch the school contacted us to say we could collect our children earlier than usual, as the weather was forecast to get worse. It did.

Mid afternoon I checked the delivery on my screen and I was told this:

From UPS at 4PM today;
Delay in delivery due to weather or natural disaster

Strangely, the van from Amazon itself managed to reach me with my tools and double sided tape to fix the new screen in place. UPS seemingly couldn't manage it.

One would think that Britain has never seen snow, or that we were wading through feet of the stuff. News reports from across my region cited numerous traffic problems and gridlocked roads. They had warning, the roads should have been gritted. Alas, this was not to be.

Determined to crack on (pun intended) with fixing my Surface Pro screen, I set about removing the old one. I began at the top center, where the crack originated from, heating the glass around the outer edge.

It was very slow going as the glass kept shattering, tiny shards flying across my office as I worked. Eventually I made it across the top and down the sides, being careful not to cut myself.

Finally, I heated up the bottom edge and slowly lifted the screen off. A little cleanup later to remove the sticky residue from the original screen installation, and this is what a naked Surface Pro 3 looks like. Not a lot to it once you ignore the big black batteries on the left of the unit.

I have decided that, as the screen has not arrived today, and since I now have access to do so, I am going to spend some of my over inflated SBDs and fit a larger capacity drive. I used to struggle for room on a 128Gb drive, and the Hynix is not exactly the fastest out there.

I'm thinking a 250Gb Samsung 850 EVO. I have it's larger brother in my main PC and I love these drives: reliable and super fast. With a bit of luck it will arrive before my screen does.