12.14.06
My friends are geeks and they’re cool
Today I fixed my computer. Well, I say I, but I really meant Jacob, Ian, and Greg. I did bring it in, at least, and I did ask for help. I mean, come on, I did something!
My laptop’s power supply has been loose for a while. It started out that I just had to wiggle it until it hit a sweet spot and it would stay there for days if I didn’t move it. And then, it got progressively worse. Sometimes I’d have to hold it for a period of time before it would stick, but it would at least still stick. Well, lately, it hasn’t even been doing that. The last few times I used it, I had to be pushing it in and then wiggling it, and I had to do that constantly just to have it register power. Because of that, I haven’t been using my computer as much as I used to. Days would go by without me turning it on because it was just so frustrating to use.
TB suggested putting a toothpick in, and has constantly been on my case about getting a new computer. But, I didn’t want a new computer because aside from the power supply, mine’s still perfectly fine. And I couldn’t decide whether I wanted a PC or a Mac. Oh, yeah, and I don’t have the money for either.
So… last night, over dinner, not exactly sure why we started talking about computers, but I mentioned this thing about my computer. Jacob told me to bring it in and he and Ian would try to fix it. So I did, even though I didn’t really think anything could be done to it.
This afternoon, he brought it back up to me and said that he couldn’t get it to work, even with all the wiggling and stuff. So, I wouldn’t have been able to use it anymore. When I told him that it did actually used to work, he decided to take it apart again and to figure it out with Ian.
Sometime in the afternoon, after I had done what I needed to do for work, I came down to see what they were up to. At that point they were still trying to figure out what to do and what was wrong, etc. I was of absolutely no help at all, of course, although I was amazed at seeing my laptop all disassembled and in pieces. And then, they started about changing the power connector. I was still really skeptical about the whole thing, but I did get something they could use.
Off in the lab, Jacob asked Greg for help unsoldering the power connectors to switch them, when it just so happened that there was a demo of a desoldering gun in the other lab. So that’s where we went. Once the pieces were out, they found out that the board wasn’t in as good a shape as it should be, so that they couldn’t just simply solder the new power connector in. Greg had to do something special to it – connect two things together using bus wire or something like that. I’m not exactly sure what it was or what it was for. But once that was done, Jacob just then soldered the power connectors on the board and on the plug. Now there’s fancy blue heat shrink around the plug, fitted using a heat gun and everything! Oh, and he had to file it down to get it to fit back into the case too.
So… bottom line is, my computer’s fixed! I am so psyched! Yahoo!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! You guys are the best! It made for a fun day at work too.
PS: I also have my own personalized Google page now! Sweet!
