I am writing this entry on my laptop. That might not seem like it's worth an entry -- after all, I have had this laptop several months -- until you take into account that last night, I finally got sufficiently frustrated that I decided to disassemble it.

Simply taking the cover off a laptop should not be an all-night job requiring several dozen tools. Yes, I see the point in trying to keep people (like me) who don't know what they're doing from idly taking it apart, but a bit of advice to any evil engineers out there? Once a tinkerer has spent time and sweat taking out the two dozen *visible* screws, and superglued and drilled out the stripped ones, she's *not* going to just give up because she can't find the rest of the screws: at that point it's me vs. them, and I'm going to win if it requires a *sledgehammer*. So I finally found the hidden screws (and hey, the keyboard needed cleaning anyway) and got it apart.

Mind you, I'm pretty sure I didn't fix whatever was wrong, but this was less a matter of "ooh, maybe I could fix it" than "ooh, it's sufficiently broken that I can't possibly break it any worse, I get to tinker!" So now I know what the inside of a laptop looks like. Mom & sister both agree that I should have just bought new batteries or taken it in for repair. But seeing as how I could buy another one for less than $150, it didn't seem worth it: so I look at it this way: waste time, hassle and money trying to get somebody else to fix it/get replacement parts, which probably won't work anyway, or waste the time and hassle having fun and learning things instead.

Also, I am of the brute force school of electronics repair: if it doesn't work, smack it really hard; if that doesn't fix it, turn it off and turn it back on; if that doesn't fix it, take it apart and put it back together; and if *that* doesn't fix it, you've probably messed it up so badly by now that it's not worth fixing anymore anyway.

Although I shocked myself by not messing it up too bad. There's only one extra piece and one missing piece, and it still works! The fan hasn't come on yet, though, (I'm using icepacks as a stop-gap) and it won't make any sound, so I'll probably open it up again and poke at those (I've only put about a fourth of the screws back in.) I don't think I fixed the main problem-- but even getting at the thing that seems to have the loose connection would have required dealing with another dozen or so ecdysiast screws, which was totally not worth the trouble, and just shaking it up does seem to have it working mildly better. While I was at it, however, I cleaned the keyboard out, put a coat of nail polish over the clit mouse, which had been getting scrapy on top, and trimmed and spliced the fraying, melting power cord. (Yes, I may get electrocuted at any point: however, considering that the other day I found myself so frustrated that I was chewing on the end of it-- *while the other end was plugged into the wall socket* -- I think it was worth the risk.)

Anyway, that was my day yesterday.