Hello everyone! I'm back after a long hiatus. Life has been lifeing, and I was feeling disheartened. But that's not what this post is about. Today I'm here to talk about maintenance and repair!
If you've followed me for a while, you know I enjoy DIY solutions, repairing my belongings, and maintaining them to keep them in good working order. Economically, financially, and socially, it's just good practice, imo. I don't want to contribute to resource extraction and landfill waste any more than I need to, and I can't afford to buy new things all the time. Plus it's just satisfying when you can fix it yourself.
From replacing a motor in Yuan's cat toy to fixing some doors in my apartment that were misaligned so they didn't latch, I've talked about my random little projects here before. But recently I discovered a website called ifixit.
They've got repair guides for soooo many things there, which is fab to me, because I almost always would rather read a repair guide and look at photos than watch a YouTube video, which is often another resource for that. I've got one open in a tab right now because I need to fix the aquarium plant light, if I can. I didn't find an aquarium light guide exactly, but I found one for an LED grow light that isn't too dissimilar, so hopefully I can get it to work. The light is strobing, which I can't tolerate, so hopefully it's just a loose soldering connection or something?
The website also sells handy repair and cleaning tools, so for now I got this anti-static brush so I can clean inside my electronics, and the little pry bar to open up those electronics that don't want you to open them generally. Because then you might CHANGE A BATTERY YOURSELF, heavens to meegatroid! In the future when I have a bit more money, they have a soldering iron tip cleaner thing, and a dust blower that's basically like a turkey baster but with a narrow tip so it blows air hard enough to replace those compressed air cans, that I want to get. I had gotten a battery-powered one years ago that claimed to do the same thing, but unfortunately in practice it just doesn't blow the air hard enough. It's more like a very loud gentle breeze, the dust ain't going anywhere. It looks like a Star Trek phaser though, so that's cool. 😂 But theirs has good reviews from people saying it worked well.
This little purchase made me happy and inspired to get to work on my little repair and maintenance projects. Wish me luck!