Life is busy.
May. 20th, 2008 10:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillOn Saturday, while I was switching between Windows and linux on my laptop (Windows for the car diagnostic software, linux because Windows apparently forgot how to use a DNS server so that I could look up what the OBD codes meant), Ubuntu decided to force a routine disk check of my boot sector. Just because it had been a while. To my dismay, fsck found and corrected an error.
Now, that's generally a sign that your hard drive may not be as healthy as it ought to be. Just in case, I ran a full backup, even though it seemed to boot and run fine. You never know.
Which was proven the next day, when I started up the machine and realized after a little while that it was running on battery power. I checked all the power connections, to no avail. Feeling how loose the connection to the laptop was, I sighed and concluded that the jack had probably broken loose, which means I would get to open up the machine and re-solder the connector; not an uncommon operation on a laptop, though I had never had it happen to me personally. With two papers hanging over my head at the moment, though, the timing could have been better.
Yesterday after lunch I attacked the problem. For thoroughness' sake, I took a multimeter to the brick assembly, in case it wasn't the laptop at all... and I'm glad I thought to do that. Dead brick. Which is easier, if a little more expensive, to fix than a loose power jack.
At my dad's urging, I still bought a male power connector and soldered leads onto it, then hooked it into his variable power suppy (boosted with a motorcycle battery), set it to 18.5V, and plugged it into the laptop. It charged happily, which confirms that there's nothing wrong with it... it's not usable, given that the charging assembly is 1) in the shop and 2) extremely ugly and non-portable, but once I replace the brick it'll be back in business. I dropped $20 for one off EBay, and I expect it to be here by next Monday at the very latest.
The last bit of busy-ness around the whole thing is that, when my laptop refused to charge on Sunday morning, I muttered to my mom and she showed me one of the Sunday ads. I thought it over, then went down to Office Depot and took them up on the offer of a new Presario laptop (my current one is a Presario, and I've liked it quite well) with a decent package... for $330 after rebate. Much less than the $1100 I paid for my current one. Even with tax, shipping, and an upgrade to a 160G hard drive, I escaped for a net expense of $470 (gross: $650). The rebate form got sent off today; the laptop itself should show up in two weeks or so. Yay graduation present!
I would have preferred that all of this happen after school is over, but at least right now I have some "extra" money to spend on equipment. At the end of term, the surplus will go toward my credit card, so I might as well buy what I need first.
I'll be at Baycon, not sure when; I'm expecting to go for roughly a day and another half-day. If you want to hook up, call me.
Now, that's generally a sign that your hard drive may not be as healthy as it ought to be. Just in case, I ran a full backup, even though it seemed to boot and run fine. You never know.
Which was proven the next day, when I started up the machine and realized after a little while that it was running on battery power. I checked all the power connections, to no avail. Feeling how loose the connection to the laptop was, I sighed and concluded that the jack had probably broken loose, which means I would get to open up the machine and re-solder the connector; not an uncommon operation on a laptop, though I had never had it happen to me personally. With two papers hanging over my head at the moment, though, the timing could have been better.
Yesterday after lunch I attacked the problem. For thoroughness' sake, I took a multimeter to the brick assembly, in case it wasn't the laptop at all... and I'm glad I thought to do that. Dead brick. Which is easier, if a little more expensive, to fix than a loose power jack.
At my dad's urging, I still bought a male power connector and soldered leads onto it, then hooked it into his variable power suppy (boosted with a motorcycle battery), set it to 18.5V, and plugged it into the laptop. It charged happily, which confirms that there's nothing wrong with it... it's not usable, given that the charging assembly is 1) in the shop and 2) extremely ugly and non-portable, but once I replace the brick it'll be back in business. I dropped $20 for one off EBay, and I expect it to be here by next Monday at the very latest.
The last bit of busy-ness around the whole thing is that, when my laptop refused to charge on Sunday morning, I muttered to my mom and she showed me one of the Sunday ads. I thought it over, then went down to Office Depot and took them up on the offer of a new Presario laptop (my current one is a Presario, and I've liked it quite well) with a decent package... for $330 after rebate. Much less than the $1100 I paid for my current one. Even with tax, shipping, and an upgrade to a 160G hard drive, I escaped for a net expense of $470 (gross: $650). The rebate form got sent off today; the laptop itself should show up in two weeks or so. Yay graduation present!
I would have preferred that all of this happen after school is over, but at least right now I have some "extra" money to spend on equipment. At the end of term, the surplus will go toward my credit card, so I might as well buy what I need first.
I'll be at Baycon, not sure when; I'm expecting to go for roughly a day and another half-day. If you want to hook up, call me.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 18:24 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 19:23 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 16:28 (UTC)I'm working ConOps graveyard shift, but I'll be out by 8am each day. What time do you expect to be on site?