Well That's No Good

While driving to the East Bay last week, in the second foulest Bay weather I've ever been in, I noticed water dripping onto my leg from under the dash. A quick inspection revealed quit a bit of water dripping out of my fuse box, and I thought this was a really bad thing. Directly above the fuse box is the post that connects the wiper motor to the windshield wiper arm.

Look at that picture: What you don't see is any sort of rubber washer to keep the damn rain from dripping on my fuse box. Since I found bits of a washer around the post, I presume the washer had simply rotted away during the last 50 years and needed to be replaced. Hey! I can do that.

The Quick Fix

Without too much time to dilly-dally, I cut a piece of old bicycle tire inner tube to fit over the post and bolded everything back together.

See that bolt holding the wiper arm to the post? That bolt has an 8 millimeter head. Before I even started this little project I knew it was an 8 millimeter head; not because I had measured it, but because the 8mm socket is missing from my damn tool box. grrrrrrrr

Go fix stuff.

Damn that Power button!

For a few months, the power button on my computer has been sticking. Sometimes, when I power up the machine, the button will stick and the machine will turn off. A bit of smacking the button usually gets the machine to start properly.

Look at that button. I don't like it.

The worst time for the button to stick is when I'm turning the computer off. When the button sticks, the computer powers off and doesn't shutdown properly. This can lead to hard-drive problems that I really don't want.

Fix it!

After tracing the power switch leads from the motherboard and a bit of soldering, I had my computer power wired to a 1/8 inch mono jack so that I can plug in whatever kind of switch I want.

A bit of testing and ..... crap, it doesn't work. The internals of the cheap jack don't line up properly with the plug on my switches. What a bummer.

Just get it working

Fortunately I still had a switch left over from an old project that I could just connect directly to the motherboard leads. Throw on a couple of self-tapping screws and the machine is back in business! Booyah!

You can hardly tell that there was any sort of customization at all. /sarcasm

Now quit reading, and solder a big switch onto something.

A bit of Computer Repair

My good buddy Constance has a rather old computer. Actually, it is an original ibook with a speedy 300Mhz processor and a whopping 192M of RAM.

OK, the RAM has obviously been updated, but other than that, the computer is still original.

One day, Constance told me a tale of tripping over her computer cord and then the adapter started sparking. Crap! The machine may be crap, but it is all she has and it has all of her writings on it.

Ah, the slow as dirt machine. See that "yo-yo" power adapter? Aside from always burning out, those things are $80 from Apple. I'll be damned if I let Apple get any of my poor writer friend's money. Let's fix that shit!

First thing first: find out where the cord is fried. Well, I'll be damned, it just happens to be fried where every other "yo-yo" adapter gets fried.
(That's me being sarcastic)

It went like this:
1. cut off part of the plastic housing
2. cut and strip wires
3. determine that the amount of exposed wire is to too short for my pathetic soldering skills
4. cut off all of the plastic housing
5. discard the metal housing under the plastic housing

Hit it with some magic!

After soldering the wires, I used hot glue to re-attach part of the plastic housing and then I wrapped the wires with electrical tape. Just to be save, I slather on a crapload of hot glue to keep everything together.

Solder, electrical tape, and hot glue. Shazaam! That's three adhesives in one project!

When the repair was completed, I put the machine in bag and pedaled over to Constance's house, where I was greeted ecstatically. It should be noted however, that there was a serious lack of cookies/coffee/beer/scotch waiting for me when I got there. cough cough, cough cough cough, hint hint.

Now quit reading, and go repair a crappy 11 year old laptop.

P.S. If anyone has an old laptop gathering dust, and the laptop isn't as crappy as Constance's current piece of shit, let me know. (Constance really needs an upgrade)