Day Seven

Okay, so technically it is past midnight, but I haven't been to bed yet, so it is still Day Seven.  I did something I consider to be AMAZING today, for me at least.  Let me start by saying I am a dumb ass.  Not because I lack intelligence, but because I made a stupid mistake when I placed an Amazon order.  What was the mistake?  I somehow sent it to a house that I used to live in back in Las Vegas.  Not even my most recent previous address, or the one after that, but the one I moved into after I left Reno in 2007!  Damn you, Amazon for making this mistake easy for me to make!  Now, I don't know how I managed to have it sent there, since a second order has the correct shipping address, but I didn't find out my stuff was going to an old address until I checked the tracking and saw it as delivered!  FML.

What was in the package?  Two Nalgene bottles and an AC adapter.  While I don't need any of this right away, I have been wanting to get music, pictures, and person info off of my old laptop, which cannot be done with out this AC adapter, since my less-than-a-year-old one crapped out.  Or so I thought...

Since my mom has Fridays off, she enjoys having me over for coffee in the morning, so I went over there today and hung out with her before work.  I had brought my old laptop over there so that my step-sister could go through my music to try to find new bands to load up her iPod with.  It was that day that my charger, which had been on the fritz for a while, finally crapped out.  While my mom and I were watching the news, I figured I would work on trying to fix the adapter, or at least rig it so the dead laptop could charge a bit.  First I worked on trying to get the piece that plugs into the computer into a more solid position since it has a few frayed wires exposed.  No such luck, this was not the issue.  Then I saw the part way down that cable had some more frayed wires exposed, so I stripped the black outer layer back and twisted them together.  Still didn't work.  At this point I gave in and went back to watching TV with my mom.

Half an hour later, as we are watching 3000 Miles to Graceland, I come up with another idea for the cable.  I stripped down the black outer layer on either side of the frayed wires and twisted the giant sections of cord together.  Yet another fail. Break time again.

After about twenty minutes, I started at it again, prompting my mom to tell me she liked my determination.  The next step I had decided to try was getting the plastic-y piece where the cord connects to the adapter box stripped away so I can see  if any frayed wires were deep in there.  They were, but they were not easily accessible without getting the adapter box open (which was a difficult task).  Once I got the box apart, I twisted the proper wires with one another, put the box back together again and tried to power on the computer for what felt like the millionth time.  SUCCESS!

I was so freaking proud of myself! I have never messed with wiring or anything electrical like that, so I am pretty impressed with this feat. Did I mention I did all of this using bulky scissors, a flat head screwdriver, tweezers, and electrical tape? Wire cutters and needle nose pliers would have been handy....

That is a lot of electrical tape...  :)