Fruitless

When I was up in PA, Todd asked me if I wanted his old Sony laptop.  He was letting my niece use it as a glorified toy for awhile but the LCD went out. He had since bought a cheap netbook that she uses so he had no use for the close to 10 year old Sony.  I threw it in my luggage and lugged it back here.

When I turned the laptop on it appeared that the LCD back light was dead. When I saw online I could get a new back light for only $15 I took a leap and bought it.  It would be an interesting little project.  I never replaced a back light before.

Well I performed the repair yesterday, sort of.  It was a huge pain in the ass.  My desk was covered in dozens of tiny little screws, many of which did not find their way back into the computer when it was reassembled. As I said I never replaced any LCD parts before so I just kept taking stuff apart until I found it.

The light is soldered to the power connector.  The old light had very delicate solder work.  I am more of a blunt force guy when it comes to soldering.  I got the wires connected to the new light and wrapped the joint in electrical tape as opposed to the rubber boot that covered the original joint.

Putting the screen back together was a mess.  Because my solder work was not nearly as clean as the original I had issues getting stuff to fit back together.  I managed to slice my thumb on a piece of razor sharp metal.  I was really surprised how much the slice hurt.  It started to bleed pretty quickly.

After applying a band-aid I was sick of this project.  I was spending all this time and frustration trying to get a laptop working that is pretty worthless.  It is a P4 with only 256 megs of RAM. I half assed got the screen back in place, fully expecting that when I tested the repair it wouldn’t work anyway.

I was surprised that the screen actually lit up.  My shoddy repair was evident by the dimness in the upper right quadrant of the screen but it was at least usable.  The semi-successful repair means that instead of heading to the recycle center the laptop will get a fresh copy of XP thrown on it and will be kept as a “guest” computer at the house.  It will still surf the web, slowly.

Ever since playing in the Rumble I have been not feeling great physically.  My right knee still has some minor swelling as we approach two weeks after the event.  My elbows and shoulders have not been feeling very happy at the gym since my return either.

I am hoping I can shake these aches and pains and get back into the groove I was in leading up to the Rumble.

During recent election cycles I have ranted about the lunacy of robocalls from candidates.  I expressed how disturbing me at home with a recorded message from a candidate was a sure way to do nothing but create ill will towards the candidate.

Well being the great innovator that he is, our 29% approval rated governor Rick Scott, has taken up using robocalls as a tool to annoy citizens outside of the election cycle as well. Twice in the past couple months I have received robocalls from our visibly disturbing governor to “report” on the progress he is making.

I was thrilled to hear that not only did he manage to cut my pay by 3%, he has been able to offer numerous corporate kick backs by cutting things like education funding and Medicaid.  Atta boy Rick, your approval rating will be in the teens in no time!

Those of you that love Iphone tower defense games NEED to download TowerDefense Lost Earth right now.  It’s is the best 99 cent game I ever played.