The Technology Guru

I swear this will be the last post about the demise of my laptop and the 6 month void that fell over my blog as a result... but a girl has to brag every now and then. I'll try not to get too tech-y, but I'm sorry if it does. You see, the day my laptop died, it was still in about 98% working order. There were no hard drive errors, processing errors, issues with speed, etc. In fact aside from being a little old, my 6+ year old laptop was in great shape (can I give a shout out to MAC for that?).

The problem though had started months before. You see, when I was in college, I would basically leave my laptop plugged in all.day.long. Of course I'd scoop it up and take it to class or the food court every now and then, but for the most part, it took up residence on my desk in my dorm or apartment. It wasn't for a little while after that when the error of my ways reared it's ugly head and my battery essentially died. I had burnt it out from having it plugged in all the time and found out then that it's very important to charge your battery... and then unplug your computer and let it die to get the max life out of a battery. Well, at that point we never took the computer out of the living room anyway, so it was again, always plugged in. Moving it from place to place cause the cord to wear and wires to come loose and eventually POP the cord broke. Bummed, I zipped over to ebay and found a replacement cord for TEN DOLLARS! What a deal!

By this time, Jude was getting around a little, lifting himself up on furniture and just exploring the world around him and so of course the laptop (which typically would hang out on the ottoman) found itself crashing to the floor regularly. It was only a matter of time of course before it flopped to the ground on the wrong angle and WHOOPS, the power cord broke off inside the power port. Ryan and I tried everything we could to fish it out and were unsuccessful. We declared the laptop dead and praised the heavens that I was obsessive enough to back up all photos and import documents regularly so as not to lose anything.

Of course being the yuppie that I am, I insisted that I would not buy a cheap replacement computer "to get us through" until we could afford the $1,000 Mac I wanted, so I trucked through without a computer for six months. Then it happened...

My husband is a prideful little man when he wants to be. So, when he heard that my cousin was able to fix my mom's computer "with a tube of super glue!" he insisted he could fix ours. Basically computers are nothing more than puzzles anyway...if you find the right piece and can figure out how to take it off and re-install it, then you're set! Well, one night after he got his pajamas on and had popped in Star Wars, he was armed with a screw driver and began surgery. He popped off the plastic casing. He screwed off the aluminum cover, and located the broken piece. We traced the broken piece through a series of wires and found a convenient little 'plug' of sorts and POPped it out.

Then came my job. I had to figure out what exact one calls this piece. I looked for serial numbers, identifying numbers, anything. Then I did a general search and came up with a bunch of hits for "power ports", plugged in my computers make and model and BAM on the screen in front of me was the exact same piece we had just popped out!

I was dancing through the house the day the piece came in and was thrilled when I was able to reinstall it and replace the covers on the computer (with only a few screws left over... I'm still not sure where they go). As I turned it over, plugged in our new power supply and plugged it into the wall, I was holding my breath as I hit the power button. Before I knew it though, the screen was lighting up and all the familiar icons were blinking to life on the display! I was and still am so proud to claim that we were able to fix our laptop!

We still have plans to update and get a new computer in the near-ish future, but having the Mac iBook back up and running really gives us more flexibility with what we plan to purchase.