My biggest laptop repair

I am very proud of myself.  Last weekend, I undertook my most extensive laptop repair yet, and it worked!

My task: replace the keyboard in my wife's laptop.  Now, this might not sound difficult, but the problem is that my wife has a Dell Inspiron 13 7359.  It's one of those convertibles where the screen will fold all the way around to turn into a quasi-tablet.  It's actually a fairly nice laptop, and it's got more than enough horsepower for her use.  The problem is that she's kind of tough on it and the keyboard was going bad.  In fact, it had quite a few keys that were either flat-out dead or very hard to press, to the point that the keyboard was basically unusable.  So it needed to be replaced.

The problem is that you can't replace this keyboard from the top.  The top of the case is all one piece and covers the space between the keys.  So you have to do it from the bottom, which means that you need to take literally all the components out of the case.  But it's not even that simple.  You can't just  take everything out and then unscrew the keyboard.  Noooo, that would be too easy.  You need remove a layer of adhesive plastic, which is on top of a protective metal plate which is glued and plastic-welded to the case and keyboard.  Then you can remove the glue that holds the keyboard to the case and replace it.  And, of course, then you've got to put back the plate and all the components.

The good news is that I managed to get through all that without too much difficulty.  I used the YouTube video above as a guide to disassembling the core components.  Then I took the advice from this iFixit thread to use use a soldering iron to melt the plastic welds (and also the glue).  I was able to use the soldering iron to go around the edges of each plastic weld and push the melted plastic to the middle of the post, as in the image below.  I used a small screwdriver to pry up the plate as I removed each weld. The soldering iron also easily melted the glue.  After replacing getting everything out, I was able to snap the new keyboard in over the plastic posts without too much trouble.  I used a little hot glue to hold it, then replaced the metal plate, using the soldering iron to spread the plastic from the welds back over the edge of the metal.  Probably not as good as new, but good enough to hold.  Then it was just a matter of putting back the sheet of adhesive plastic and all the system components.

Inside of the case with some of the plastic welds melted

The only part that I actually had any serious problems with was reconnecting the circuit board that houses the WiFi chip to the the motherboard.  For some reason, I just couldn't get the cable to stay put.  I'm not sure if it was just loose or if I wasn't getting it seated properly.  This was especially annoying because that board is what the power button is connected to, so the system wouldn't even turn on if it came loose, which kept happening in the process of putting the back cover on.  I eventually was able to get it to stay put with some tape, so at least it worked out.

In the process, I also upgraded the laptop hard drive from spinning rust to solid-state.  I used EaseUs Todo Backup Home version to and a USB hard drive enclosure to clone the existing system from the HDD to the SSD and just swapped in the SSD when I was putting the system back together.  It worked out great.  The drive cloning process was fairly painless.  It took around 45 minutes to clone the 500GB drive.  The only annoyance was the progress bar that stayed at 53% for half an hour before jumping to 90% when it was about to finish.  The software seemed fairly nice, but I didn't use it much - I really just needed to clone that one disk.  They have a free version, but sadly it does not seem to include the system cloning feature, so I just used the free trial of the paid version.  This does require you to sign up for a subscription and cancel before the trial ends, which is annoying, but not ultimately a big deal.

So now my wife can actually type on her laptop and it has a faster disk.  Total cost: $115.  That's probably less than I would have paid for just the parts if I'd taken it to a shop (which I don't know if they're even opened now).  The break-down was $20 for the keyboard, $70 for the SSD, $15 for the hard drive enclosure, and $10 for a soldering iron.  Yes, I had to buy a soldering iron.  I'd never actually used one before, believe it or not.  But I used it successfully and only burned myself once.  Not bad for a software guy, if I do say so myself.

A substitute for the Olympics

I'm not a big sports fan.  I'll watch a fight now and then (boxing, Muay Thai, or MMA), but that's about it.  I don't have favorite teams and I don't follow the careers of individual athletes.

However, I do make an exception for the Olympics.  Every other year I become an avid sports fan for a couple of weeks and watch as much coverage of the Olympic games as I can.  And I don't really even care what the events are, either.  I'll watch everything from racing to curling - anything I can find.  Because, for me, it's not about the sports per se.  It's more the atmosphere of (usually) good-natured competition between nations.  It's a chance to celebrate the success of individual athletes while simultaneously cheering for your "team".

Sadly, this year the Olympics have been postponed due to coronavirus.  However, my wife found an acceptable substitute on Netflix in the form of the Ultimate Beastmaster.

I know that probably sounds crazy, but stick with me.

If you haven't seen the show, the basic premise is that it's a game show where contestants have to run through an obstacle course.  They take turns running the course and get points for getting past the obstacles.  Whoever ends up with the most points wins.  There are multiple "levels" to the course and the game is run as an elimination tournament to get to the final level where the winner is determined.

So how is that like the Olympics?  Well, for starters, there's a meeting of nations.  Each episode features six teams of athletes, each representing a different country.  And I say "athletes" rather than "contestants" because that's what you have to be to get through this obstacle course.  Like the Olympics, the course requires some strategy and is very physically challenging.  Actually, that's an understatement - it's not "challenging", it's absurdly difficult.  The course varies between seasons and episodes, but I swear some of them are borderline impossible.

But more importantly, the Ultimate Beastmaster has very much the same vibe as the Olympics.  There are two announcers from each country represented, and yes, they talk a lot of crap to each other, but they keep the overall mood very positive.  Everyone roots for their team, and when their team is eliminated, they root for the another team.  The sportsmanship and camaraderie, both from the athletes and announcers, is inspiring.

So while it's not the Olympics, Ultimate Beastmaster gives me a lot of the same things - global community mixed with national pride, intense competition, and celebrating great personal achievements.  If you're missing that Olympic feeling this summer (and you're a Netflix subscriber), then give it a try.

What happened to your favorite wrestlers

Like many kids, I watched professional wrestling when I was growing up.  From the time I was about 10 or 12 I was a big fan of the WWF and WCCW.  For a while I would religiously watch the regular programs on TV and even rented the older Wrestlemania VHS tapes from the local video store.  I lost track of it when I was in college, but it was great fun for a kid - lots of bold, flashy characters and enough action to be exciting, but not scary.

A few weeks ago I listened to Joe Rogan's interview with Diamond Dallas Page and it made me wonder what happened to some of the other iconic wrestling figures I remembered from my childhood.  Some of them I knew about - Hulk Hogan has been in the news; I knew Andre the Giant had died; I'd listened to Jake the Snake Roberts on Joe Rogan a few months ago.  But what about all the others?  What about people like Mr. Perfect, Bam Bam Bigelow, Ravishing Rick Rude, or the Ultimate Warrior?

Well, it turns out they're all dead.

I learned this from an unexpectedly captivating site called the Ten Bell Salute.  It's a database and tribute site dedicated to memorializing the deaths of professional wrestlers.  And it turns out there are a lot of them.

Part of the reason the site is both captivating and depressing is that it really brings home how tough the life of a pro wrestler actually is.  According to their data page, of the 2024 wrestler deaths in their database, 473 died before the age of 50 and the average age of death was only 61.  It's actually strangely comforting when you happen across one who was old enough to collect social security.

Each wrestler listed on the site has their own story, but many of them are quite tragic.  Many were due to drug use or complications thereof - sometimes from the performance-enhancing drugs used to build muscle, other times from narcotics to deal with injury or stress.  And some, like Kerry Von Erich, who committed suicide at 33, or Chris Benoit, who killed his family and then himself, are their own special kind of tragic.

Beyond the stories themselves, these deaths seem so impactful because it's the first time I've really looked at them as actual people.  On TV, I knew them only as their characters - big, muscular, walking down to the ring in elaborate costumes, putting on larger-than-life personalities and engaging in epic feuds with each other.  They hardly seemed capable of having the same problems as regular people.

But, of course, they were regular people. 

The fact is, you don't get into a line of work like that if you have a Harvard degree and a trust fund.  Wrestling may be "fake" in the sense that the outcomes are predetermined, but it's still incredibly physically demanding.  It's hard to take that amount of punishment, as often as they do, without your body starting to break down.  These people lived tough lives and it took a toll.  

So if you, too, loved pro wrestling as a kid, I recommend browsing through the Ten Bell Salute.  It's a nice way to bring back those childhood memories and, at the same time, reflect on the transience of life and the reality of the human beings behind the heroes and villains that we know from the media.  That may sound a bit heavy, but it's a surprisingly rewarding experience.