My MP3 player stopped charging its own battery. In the past this would have been a tragic event, but luckily my co-workers have their own MP3 devices now, so I wasn’t forced to listen to John Aielli, or anything as horrible as that.
The first thing I tried was replacing the battery.
The MP3 player has a metal case, and once you unscrew a few carefully hidden fasteners, the electronic guts of the player slide right out the top. But the battery still wouldn’t charge, so I bypassed the internal battery entirely, entering the MP3 player into my appliance-wide system of rechargeable NiMH AAs.
I’m guessing that there is smutz on the contacts of the USB recharge cord and that’s why it’s not recharging. This is a little less compact, but perfectly serviceable.
I also had some problems with the power supply cord for my laptop. There was a period of a month or so when I had to fuss with the cord for a few minutes, jiggling the cord and setting it at different angles, until it actually conveyed electricity. It finally got bad enough that I opened it up and spliced out the break in the wires.
There’s a theme of intermittent wire fatigue breaks in my life that I think has its roots in the way I wad up cords and stuff them in my shoulder bag.
The laser printer I’ve been using, a freecycle find from editor D, has been printing funny. So I opened up the cartidge, managing to totally break it and cover everything in my house with a fine layer of printer toner.
So I ordered a new cartridge. Which is just as well. I’m fairly certain that this cartridge was having troubles due to a pervasive mat of cat hair within the toner receptacle.