I’m a big fan of home surgery. The nails on my big toes are majorly deformed after years of “corrective surgery” but it works for me. When I was climbing this was especially essential, because the climbing shoes are always too tight for comfort and my feet would sometimes bleed.

My laptop had been playing up recently. The screen would flicker horizontally and then turn off. Flexing the motherboard (yeah, that sounds safe) would cause it to correct itself. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

… for a while. Then it turned off and needed bashing instead of flexing. It was getting worse, so I took it to WJ Moncreif to repair. They looked at it last time and fixed it. $137.50 later and they told me they’re reseated a few cables. “Cool” I thought. I expected it was just a loose cable. I get it home and it works for a whlie and then goes back to its old ways. Two days later I took it back to Moncreif and spoke with the technician. He was helpful but stressed there wasn’t much he could do short of replacing the entire motherboard. I devised a plan.

The keyboard is easy to remove, and the video cable that connects the motherboard to the LCD display is visible. Pushing and prdding it fixed the problem as it occured, so that was what I needed to target. I stacked some double-sided tape on top of itself to make a double-thickness piece, and stuck it on top of the contact point. I replaced the keyboard and it seems to have done the job. It’s been in my docking station this entire time so I hope when it’s mobile that it doesn’t borgenstein again.