Small victories

Amongst the chaos and frustration of everyday life, I do have the occasional small victory. Something that I'm proud of, just for me, I don't expect or need for anyone else to notice. For example:

This laptop, a Dell B130, hasn't had a working battery for years. The bracket keys are missing too, which can be inconvenient. Turns out my brother has the same laptop with a good battery but it won't work on the AC adapter. This seemed to be some kind of opportunity to maybe have one completely whole working laptop. He brought over his laptop and we verified that both AC adapters were good, one battery good, one bad.

In summary: laptop A with bad battery and missing keys, laptop B with good battery, good keyboard and bad connection somewhere inside.

Today while grandson and grand nephews were whooping it up, I retreated to the garage to see what I could do. With the help of the Dell service info, I disassembled laptop B right down to removing the motherboard. Looking closely at where the barrel connector plugs into the board, I could see one connection that looked burnt. Maybe I'd be lucky. So I cleaned around that area and soldered it nice and shiny. Reassembling I worked backwards through the motherboard, speakers, antenna, modem, coin battery, screen, keyboard, trim pieces, disk, processor, heatsink, DVD player, and memory. All the little tiny connectors and screws and pieces that I had carefully laid out in a kind of zen calm.

No screws left over, or missing. All parts accounted for, well I did have to go back a couple steps because I had forgotten the coin battery. Plugged it in. By god, it worked. Booted right up, requested date and time. Keyboard and mouse worked, display clear, connected to my network.

That was my victory today, but it's not the end result that really matters, it's the calm of the moments leading up to it that I treasure. All those little bits had been dancing to my tune.