repairing things

next stage away from legal proprietariness would be universal parts but that would take away from the profit margin wouldn't it?
Like people couldn't accidentally buy the wrong part then not return them within the given time like

I got sand in the telescopic lens bit of a pocket digital camera and can't get it to clear. Have tried compressed air so far but still not clearing.
Don't know what to do. Don't have funds to get a camera fixed and missing taking photos.

vacuum cleaner?

I've heard vacuums can be bad for electronics, because of static (?), but it might still be the best bet in this case, since you can't exactly take the lens off. Compressed air can give mixed results, since you run the risk of getting the grains further in there, but anything that potentially loosens them has got to be a good thing.

Does it still retract/extend? Is it something annoying that you can live with, or is it affecting the operation of the camera?

How do you dial the operator on that, ledge?

when the silicon nose pads fall off my glasses I have fucked up before by trying to superglue them back on again and ruining the lenses. The specsavers ones are a piece of hard plastic quite solidly fixed to the pad arms with a silicon covering which invariably fall off after a year or so of wear and tear. I bought some full moulded nose pads from e-bay for a few quid. Removed what was left of the uncomfortable specsavers one with a hot knife and fitted the replacement with some long nosed pliers. Not exactly the most amazing repair I have ever done but I'm happy because they are more comfortable on the nose than the previous ones. And I really hate going to specsavers, even they offer free repairs on their glasses - can't fucken stand the place.

my dad had an dental plate for his upper teeth - a while back it broke, and my dad decided to repair it w ~superglue~ him being an endearing combo of deeply practical & wildly impractical

of course the superglue precluded any repair the dentist/orthodontist could have made & dad had to shell out for a whole new plate instead of a repaired one :(

you have no control over superglue as well, just the gentlest most careful little squeeze and it runs everywhere. It's still very useful though, lol!

If you want to hang from a girder by a hard hat, it's aces.

i have faith in superglue to a point but not so that i’d put it anywhere near my mouth lol jeez dad

Superglue may be one of the most fear inducing substances you can buy at a retail building.

Learning cycle repair and maintenance to a great degree. Have always wanted to get some mechanical training,. Hoping that once I do have this training I can also apply principles elsewhere. Sewing Machines etc.
But when society collapses I will at least have this behind me.
Has been cutting into my reading time though.

If there's super glue around, have some debonder (Bob Smith Industries Debonder https://a.co/d/38h6pjG) on hand. I learned about it when having to use super glue in a STEM camp for 40 8th graders gave me massive anxiety

aren't they less trouble if they're all stuck together?

repairing kids by making real bonds between them?

lmao

I doubt the parents would approve though

More that they'd end up stuck to me and have to take some home 🤣

"Separating plastics parts with a razor saw is usually the best option"

Poor kids

Portable oil radiator stopped working.
Disassembled and tested continuity. The tip-over safety switch seemed to have gone.
Removed it, joined the contacts.
Radiator works.
Another safety feature, successfully disabled!

I will simply not knock it over.

if it's plugged into a circuit protected by an RCBO it'll be reet! Although I say this about all dodgy electrical appliances, perhaps one day I'll be wrong!

this year i have fixed both of my toilets.
didn't really have an option as getting a plumber to help out re a small issue in the uk these days is quite literally impossible.
both toilets had problems with the flushing system.
one of which i had to completely replace the inner workings of the cistern tank and then stop massive water leaks due to crap seals,
the other was a simple washer issue but stopped a toilet from making a weird amd annoying droning sound after every flush.

and yeah, fixing these issues = personal highlights of 2022.

a barbarous attempt at darning moth holes in my jumpers. two of them will i think be serviceable, and in fact with the last one I did I think I felt a glint of what might have been pride. the cotton/wool one was just too fine a weave and I gave up.

this year everything's going in the freezer at the end of the season and then in bags.

had the shade of plaxico looking over me sceptically as i worked.

My recent fixing achievement was to patch a skylight leak using that smelly sticks-even-on-wet-sutfaces caulk and some foam tube. It held through yesterday's historic rains. I'll get a roofer out in the spring when the Bay Area dry season starts and get it fixed for real.

FAIL!

pvr broke. it would start up but wouldn't find the disk. so i pulled out and put it in a caddy and, well, there was smoke. bought replacement disk, found one on sale, 6x larger than the original. put it in tonight, turned it on. nothing. no lights, no fan.

next time maybe i won't leave it over a year...

BUT THEN...

turned it on and left it on and the front panel lit up. switched TV over to correct input. strains of bbc one, but no picture. scratching sound coming from device. screen flashed green. burning smell. visible smoke (from the aerial out?). 8(

looks like i have a new external drive at least.

that smell really lingers

I had a wall bracket to fix up for a television in the bedroom. My 24v battery hammer drill is superficially in good condition but the batteries have degraded so badly because I've barely used it in 10 years.

It will charge up enough to drill 1-2 holes at most before sputtering to a slowing level of uselessness. I didn't think it had enough life left to do it so I ordered a basic cheap plug in 230 drill for £50 that I can't really afford.

Then I thought maybe by charging and fully discharging the batteries repeatedly by taping the drill trigger might spark a bit more life into the batteries and after doing this for hours it started to charge up enough to drill 4 holes which is almost like overkill for a bracket that is probably slightly heavier than the smallish tv it's holding up. If I'd kept the faith that you can make old knackered stuff work through dogged persistence sometimes, then I wouldn't have wasted £50, damn it.

Can you return the mains powered drill? If it’s undamaged it’s probably worth trying? I’m not sure about consumer law in the UK but “change of mind” within a day or two seems reasonable.

yeah probably could, lol it doesn't arrive until tomorrow. But then again it will probably be worth holding onto so next time much less fucking about. So probably not a waste of money, more like a purchase I probably won't need for a few years.

I cleaned the front of my telly with a bit of spray and a duster and just noticed a few flickering lines running vertically up the screen. I barely made any contact with it at all! I've fucked it, haven't I?

maybe check to see if any cables are a bit loose

Don't let moisture or dampness get into a flat screen or you will regret it.any more liquid is even worse

Did finally manage to get the stereo out and clean the laser on it . But still not playing a few things properly.
Tried Marquee Moon on it again and got a load of fuzz still after first couple of tracks sounded pretty thin.
Soft Machine Third still iffy as to whether it will play through or just hit a random point and stop go to still where yo see the full disc tinming etc.
& the Lee Perry thing i bought a couple of weeks back still doing the same.

I guess the thing is getting pretty old. I bought it in 2005. But still would be good to get a few more years out of it.

a thing I've never thought about, until it broke, is the light in a fridge. it broke the other day whilst i was defrosting (i think it got dripped on because the glass is cracked)

anyway, odd though it looked, stumpy little thing, replacements are available in supermarkets for £2. led as well, 1.8W. hilariously it gives the kwh used on the side of the box, for something that's on about 30 seconds a day.

(light bulb and battery technology has really come on in my lifetime. i remember lugging around old bike lights that took two A cells)

also fixed the toilet inlet, again, so the tank fills up. just needs loosening up every 6 months or so because of the likely build up. i realise that there will come a time when this will not work.

I recently changed to LED fridge lights not for the trivial energy savings but rather to be able to use 5000°K daylight bulbs, which give off natural sunlight-like illumination rather than the overly warm candlelight look from incandescent lamps. Hard to describe, but easy to see the difference - colours really jump out at you.

The A/C in our car has been acting weird for a few years, with the fan sometimes blowing hard but no actual cold air coming out. This would happen intermittently for long stretches and then stop happening, with no rhyme or reason to it. Recently the A/C finally seemed to go out for good. There are any number of things it could have been. The ambient air sensor (which is a PIA to reach, involving removing the front bumper), a hidden fuse (literally, you have to take some things apart to find it), the compressor (expensive). There's also just a good old fashioned leak, discovery of which would entail draining, refilling with dye, and then waiting. But doing some research I found that it could also be something called an EVAP Sensor, the temperature sensor in the car air conditioning system. That part costs $25, and in our case is located in the driver's side foot well, right by the gas pedal, relatively easy to access. I didn't change it myself, but the $25 OEM part I ordered online fixed the problem. Very satisfying, not least because cars are becoming harder and harder to work on without the right proprietary tech/tools.

It is such a relief when you tick off the possible causes of a problem, and the easiest solution is the one that offers the fix.

For example, there's a known problem with Mercedes where the car won't start if the brake lamp is out. Going from "whatthefuck,how am I going to afford this" to smiling real big and going "are you fucking kidding me?" can be quite the ride.

My biggest auto-related AYFKM moment was finding out that one of the most common reasons for the useless "Check Engine" alert to activate was because of a worn out gas cap seal.

https://www.404media.co/apple-endorses-california-right-to-repair-bill/

"Apple told a California legislator that it is formally supporting a right to repair bill in California, a landmark move that suggests big tech manufacturers understand they have lost the battle to monopolize repair, and need to allow consumers and independent repair shops to fix their own electronics."

nice

bring back radioshack

one of the most common reasons for the useless "Check Engine" alert to activate was because of a worn out gas cap seal.

which can lead to your car failing a smog/emissions test ... so not 100% useless ime

Had a microwave poop out on us the other day, which I diagnosed as the door switch (the fuse-like thing inside that makes sure the door connection is sealed before it puts out heat). Wasn't something I was comfortable fixing myself, but it didn't matter, since, at 10, they no longer make out model or parts for it. We had a guy out who apologized for being unable to do anything with it, so I had to get a new one, though I was able to reinstall the trim (it's an under the counter model).

Weirdly, at the same time our top loading washing machine broke, or specifically, the hubcap-looking wheel/agitator came loose, which thankfully just means swapping out for a new one. Pretty straight forward.

Shit like that *always* happens at the same time. Rule of threes and all that.

Our overflow pipe has been pissing out water for the last couple of weeks - the one from the water tank in the loft that comes out under the eaves of the roof. I've worked out how to turn the water off in the street, so I did that, then got up in the loft, removed the ball valve and bent the metal shaft down slightly, hoping that means the tank will fill slightly lower and not reach the overflow.

It's currently the hottest September on record in the UK and fuck ME was it hot up there. I was running with so much sweat I couldn't see and when I came down I smelt like a swamp. It's not dripping right now, so fingers crossed...

when I was doing an electrical apprenticeship I sweated out in so many dusty lofts. The worst one was the housing office in Bradford during a heatwave. All the dust sticks to you. I constantly felt like passing out, knowing that if I did there was only a thin piece of plasterboard between the widely spaced ceiling joists protecting me from a 50 ft plummett to certain injury or death!

Nothing like an existential threat to keep you conscious!

toilet leak, the seal where the pipe from the cistern enters the bowl has worked use over the years and now it trickles along the outside of the bowl when i flush. but a) it's clean water and b) it's only during the flush, so like an eggcup-full.

landlord's plumber has been around and because it's boxed in and access is difficult he's proposed replacing the entire thing, cistern, bowl, etc. and the *unrelated* vanity unit when it's really only one seal that needs attention.

he's also the gas check man and had already talked about replacing the cooked (doesn't meet current regs) and the boiler (inefficient).

ironically, the one non-working thing in the flat is the washing machine, none of the above is fatally broken. so all basically off-topic, sorry.