I was pretty awesome today. Fixed my LCD.

This post was going to be about me trying drugs for the first time last Friday, but on Saturday something more important happened.

My BenQ 19" LCD monitor broke, it was switching off by itself after I turn it on and was making annoying high-pitched sounds while going between on and off states. I applied my "Educated Guess" ability and surmised that some faulty capacitors in powering circuit are to blame - a problem I am totally qualified to deal with. Disassembling the monitor (the plastic back panel) was troublesome since i never did it before and i had to take advise from YouTube for this, but the rest was pretty straightforward. As i expected, three capacitors were inflated and had to be replaced.

So, I bravely ventured out on a quest for required circuit elements and soldering gizmos. Long story short i ended with a simple 40W soldering iron (which is a bit too much for electronics btw), a bunch of soldering supplies (solder, flux, etc..), a solder sucker, a capacitance meter, a multimeter and new capacitors, of course.

Desoldering bad capacitors with the pump was a breeze, soldering in new ones took some efforts, but eventually the job was done and I am writing this post on a fixed monitor, happy as an elf on a tree.

P.S. all the equips together cost me around $40, the price of fixing LCD alone was below $1, if you are interested.

I got a job!

My days of unemployment are over, it seems. As per usual, the initiative was not mine. My dad reached out and pushed me into job interview, which resulted in being hired.

Well, can't say I'm excited much: salary is shit, work is low-tech IT mostly and on top of it they forced me to continue my higher education (remotely), and I must pay for it myself, of course. So, basically i will work for food till summer, which beats sitting flat with no job at all, but only by little.

As of right now, I've worked for a full week. Was bored most of the time and feeling incompetent for the rest of it. I seriously lack in "handy" skills, like drilling and screwing and soldering, but I'll catch up no doubt.

On the "plus" side the repair shop i work at is located within 15 minutes of walk from my home and i can have lunch at my place. Also, people at work are very nice and my boss is kinda cool old dude. I'm not very social person myself and often get uncomfortable in a new environment, but not there. I "clicked" in perfectly.

Hand made!

So-so. Few days ago a rush of creativity came over me, my hands were itching for action. Here is the result, it took me 9 hours over two nights to make this crappy picture, but I'm still proud of it.

Man on a photo is John Wells who told me he is not red-haired "down there". Too bad, John, I'm sucker for ginger. :-)

Grey (Flash game).

Ok. After some emotional downtime I'm back to blogging. Almost got over the idea someone someday would comment.

(link)

This little game is nothing special really (click an icon to go check it out) but it reflects my mood exactly - sadness and tragic inevitability.

It takes only few minutes to finish the quest, and almost all of that time you kind of know it is not gonna be happy end, but still something inside of you makes you go all the way.

Master of Algebra!

Check out this beauty! It took me 2.5 hours straight of mind-focusing, but I did it, I got the final badge of "Khan Academy" 's mathematic practice course.

I wish they had other subjects, I'd love to do some genetics/microbiology problems.

Khan Academy: "Kinematic equations" exercise is done!

 

Being sentimental about my school years and following a habit of picking challenges I am certain of being able to handle I vowed to beat Khan Academy's Math exercise course month ago and I'm nearly done with it.

While most of presented problems are supposed to be solved with pen-and-paper toolkit, some explicitly allow use of a calculator. Which I shamelessly abused while solving "Kinematic equations".

Anyone interested can play with the spreadsheet live on Google Docs or download Microsoft Excel file.

8 equations are necessary and sufficient to solve 80% of this exercise - a statement I have formally proven!

Google Reader's magic

I am trying out Google Reader to aggregate the variety of blogs and news feeds I am subscribed to. As for now some things remain unknown to me, for example - how to comment on the blog posts I read and how to read existing comments? I hope to get around it soon and have a powerful tool of news access on my hands.