Cashing in my Geek Discount

For the past few weeks, the stereo in my car has been cutting out the audio on the left side. It's annoying. Try setting the balance fully to the right in your car, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Assuming it was just a loose wire behind the deck itself, I pulled it out earlier tonight to repair the wire. But the wires were all ok. I fiddled with it some more, and it looked like something was loose internally. So, I took it out, and brought it upstairs.



Not having done this before, I wasn't sure where to look - but had an idea that if something is loose... it should be relatively evident. Well, I had to take the entire thing apart. Even removing the CD player from inside. All to see the bottom of the circuit board, where I suspected the problem was.



That's pretty much what it looked like mostly taken apart. The culprit? As I suspected, there were some solder connections on the main board that have broken over time:



Now that I could tell what the problem was... the only thing to do was solder it all back together. Thank goodness for magnifying glasses and 30 year-old soldering irons. That Cold Heat soldering gun would have been fantastic.

But, I hacked the thing back together. It's ugly, but - it works! :D Who'd have thought being a bit geeky would pay you back financially?? If not for my "geek discount", I'd have to go and buy a whole new deck!

Six hotels, one campsite, 10 states, 13 days, and 8000km.

That's my summer vacation, in a nutshell. :)

I'll be heading down to Missouri to visit Husineh & James, and put a new top on the car. From there, I'll be driving south through Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and just grazing the eastern edge of California. Oh, and stopping in to see the Grand Canyon for a day and a half too. :D

If you do the math... that's really only 615km per day. Not too bad. But... too bad I'm not driving every day. For the days that I am driving... it works out to about 890km per day.

Ask me what I think about gas prices. I can finally afford a long road trip... and gas is fifty-eighty-hundred-million dollars per litre.