my poor baby

So my laptop died a couple weeks ago. I was going to blog about it sooner, but it got busy and I accidentally took some of the pictures in raw format and had to install some camera software.

Anyway, what happened was the little jack where the adapter plugs into broke off. And since my battery does not hold a charge, my laptop pretty much died because it wasn't plugged into the wall anymore. Since it is no longer under warranty, Brian and I undertook the daunting task of trying to fix it.

Here's a picture of my laptop in pieces.


We had to actually take it apart more because we couldn't remove the broken existing jack without taking the motherboard off.

Here are all the screws that used to hold my laptop together.


After 3 or 4 hours of taking the laptop apart, we were ready to attempt to fix it. We went to Fry's and Radio Shack to try to find a jack that was the right size, but to no avail. It would just be too easy if we could find the right part at the store. So in the end we went with some jack that Brian had in one of his junk boxes. After removing the broken jack, we soldered two wires into the motherboard, and then pulled them through the open hole in the back of the laptop where the adapter plug usually goes. We then tried out Brian's new heat shrink gun to try to protect the wires, and then soldered the ends onto the jack.

Here is a picture of the final product.


We did end up adding some electrical tape around the jack and the bare wire for more protection, and so I don't get shocked.

We turned it on and . . .



It worked!

For the most part. We discovered that the Q, E, I, S, H, and ENTER keys were not functional. We took it apart again and checked the keyboard connection, but they still didn't work. We did bend the keyboard quite a bit to get it out in the first place, so that might have broke it. But we just plugged in an external keyboard, and it does just fine. Hopefully it will run okay for a little while longer. I don't want to invest in a new one quite yet. I'm getting my new camera first!

flickr again

Alright, so I figured out how to make the link to my flickr page a little more intuitive and not just a bunch of random numbers. Here's the new and easier to remember link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iwannadance/

I just put up a few pictures of the kids in our life group. We went to a little superbowl party today at Howard and Doran's. It was fun. I didn't watch too much of the superbowl, mostly kids. I think that's a much better way of spending my time.

Oh, I wonder who won. Maybe I should look it up now. Talk to you guys later.

flickr

Oh, I started a flickr site. I've been playing around with pictures a little more lately, and I really really really really want to get a new camera sometime this year. (You should ask Brian, I think I've been bringing it up like 10 times a day) Anyway, we'll see . . .

Eventually, I want to embed the photostream in this blog, but I can't quite figure it out at the moment. So for now, here's the link:

http://flickr.com/photos/23090509@N02/

I don't have much up there right now, but I'll try to add more as I take them.

elections

There's not much for me to say here. I'm frustrated at all the campaigning. I feel like it wastes tons of money, tends to bring people down to an undignified level, and it causes a lot of conflict that I don't think needs to be there.

Anyway, I think I'm voting for Obama (seeing as independents, we can't vote in the republican primary anymore). Hillary's gone a little too far with the mudslinging.

Brian and I were discussing it last night and I asked him his thoughts on the candidates and the main differences between Obama and Clinton. Brian said that what stands out the most to him is that Obama supports net neutrality and is the only candidate he's heard that has a stance on technology.

I shouldn't be surprised.

I'm not saying it's not an important issue, but that is SO TOTALLY Brian.