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Saturday, June 12th, 2010 05:48 pm
day one : learning to solder, courtesy of youtube
My first practical soldering experiences; so far, nothing has been lit on fire.
( adventures with soldering irons: practice )
I think I'm making the learning process harder than it needs to be by not starting at the right place. I'm going about this backwards, but honestly, I'm not even sure where to start. And the people I'd usually ask IRL are either a.) the type to tell me not to worry my little head about it and get a professional to do it, b.) not understand my questions or why I want them answered, or c.) (most irritating) willing to teach in a limited sense what he thinks I should know, not what I'm actually asking for, and find the entire thing hilarious and make sure I know it's totally a waste of time. I'll solder my fingers to the board before asking again; it's just not worth that level of irritation. If I want to be condescended to for this, I can go online and get it without that special, personal touch.
(One guy I know is awesome about answering questions, V's husband, but he's getting his PhD in computer science; I'm not asking Batman to help me read a motherboard. He's one of the only guys I ever met who is willing to sit down and try to help for as long as I need and tends to assume if I want to do something, obviously I can do it; however, while my computer science language is okay, my engineering and mechanical language is not, and until I know how to word my questions, we have multiple communication breakdowns. And again, Batman. You save Batman for like, complicated stuff. He is interested in my progress, though.)
Weirdly, they're all guys. I'm sure it's a total coincidence.
On schedule for tonight: Child's laptop is hanging in the Windows welcome screen. After running memory diagnostics, it's failing. So tonight I'm observing Child take apart his laptop and remove the hard drive, at which time I'll put it in an enclosure and hook it to my laptop so I can verify the diagnostics and copy it if possible. I'm hoping it's something simple, but adding a new hard drive to next month's budget list just in case. I am so not looking forward to reinstalling everything.
Also resisting Frye's DIY extravaganza; I do not need to build a desktop. The computers per capita in the house is getting a little surreal.
( adventures with soldering irons: practice )I think I'm making the learning process harder than it needs to be by not starting at the right place. I'm going about this backwards, but honestly, I'm not even sure where to start. And the people I'd usually ask IRL are either a.) the type to tell me not to worry my little head about it and get a professional to do it, b.) not understand my questions or why I want them answered, or c.) (most irritating) willing to teach in a limited sense what he thinks I should know, not what I'm actually asking for, and find the entire thing hilarious and make sure I know it's totally a waste of time. I'll solder my fingers to the board before asking again; it's just not worth that level of irritation. If I want to be condescended to for this, I can go online and get it without that special, personal touch.
(One guy I know is awesome about answering questions, V's husband, but he's getting his PhD in computer science; I'm not asking Batman to help me read a motherboard. He's one of the only guys I ever met who is willing to sit down and try to help for as long as I need and tends to assume if I want to do something, obviously I can do it; however, while my computer science language is okay, my engineering and mechanical language is not, and until I know how to word my questions, we have multiple communication breakdowns. And again, Batman. You save Batman for like, complicated stuff. He is interested in my progress, though.)
Weirdly, they're all guys. I'm sure it's a total coincidence.
On schedule for tonight: Child's laptop is hanging in the Windows welcome screen. After running memory diagnostics, it's failing. So tonight I'm observing Child take apart his laptop and remove the hard drive, at which time I'll put it in an enclosure and hook it to my laptop so I can verify the diagnostics and copy it if possible. I'm hoping it's something simple, but adding a new hard drive to next month's budget list just in case. I am so not looking forward to reinstalling everything.
Also resisting Frye's DIY extravaganza; I do not need to build a desktop. The computers per capita in the house is getting a little surreal.
