Nook Simple Touch Hung on Update

Found my Nook Simple Touch hung this morning in an update. Unclear when this started, some time over night. The Nook was plugged into the charger all the time.

After about 10 minutes I decided that the "Please don't turn off your NOOK!" is nonsense, because nothing was happening. Note that the progress bar at the bottom was not animated and appeared somewhat mispainted.

After holding the power button at the back of the device pressed for at least 20 seconds, the device power cycled and went through a bootup cycle which almost immadiately entered the "Installing..." display again. But this time, the progress bar at the bottom was animated, slowly filling from the left. Then it switched to another startup screen, the progress too about 2 minutes.

Finally the usual screen saver appeared. I could unlock the device, and the main screen displayed a notification icon regarding a software update. The time of the update is the time of the power cycle.

Apple iMac Harddrive Replacement

Needed to replace the Harddrive on an Apple iMac. This is a white plastic Intel iMac. After removing all screws from the bottom (where the memory modules are also installed), the back of the case can be pulled off, starting at the bottom, with a 'crack'. There's a lot of aluminium-backed tape inside, and after removing the LCD panel the hard drive becomes accessible.

The original drive was 160GB. A 250GB replacement was found for around $60 (3.5", SATA).

Then it came to re-installing the operating system from DVDs, where I ran into two surprises:

1. No disk found.
   With Linux, installing an OS from DVDs is fairly straight forward. You are guided through partitioning the hard drive etc. With OS X, I was expecting it to be even easier, but wrong: The installation asks you to select a hard drive for the installation without offering anything. Solution: Close the installer, select Tools/Disk Utility from the menu to format and partition the drive. When installing again, you can now select the drive.
2. Can't eject the disk??
   When prompted to insert the second installation DVD, I could not figure out how to eject the first one. Nothing worked. Finally I learned that the drive was empty ... I had not fully re-assembled the case because I first wanted to check if everything "worked". When the iMac ejects a DVD, it's usually kept half-way in the drive because of the felt lining of the DVD slot. This time, the iMac had ejected the first OS installation DVD, it had rolled of the table and vanished under some cubboard. From the outside, I could not tell if there's a DVD in the drive or not. Since I didn't remember ejecting the DVD nor saw one in the usual half-out-of-the-drive position, I had assumed that it's still "in"....

Light Switch Replaced

Light in one bedroom failed. Wasn't the light bulb. Worried that it's the light fixture or the wiring in the attic, but turned out to be the light switch. At Home Depot, found that it's the cheapest type of 15A, 120V single-pole switch: $1.30 incl. tax.

Garage Door Repair

How long do garage door mechanisms last?

Don't remember all the dates, but had to replace a motor and a spring already. Today another spring. While doing that, noticed that a wire was damaged, so swapped that and also needed a new pulley.

When	What
2006?	Left garage spring
2008?	Right garage Motor
2010	Left garage spring, wire ropes, pulley $60

Laptop from Trash to the Ham Shack

Assume you have a 6 year old Compaq Presario 3000, disk is full of programs no longer (or never) used. Plus: it has been dropped so that the display's lower 5mm are garbled up and the DVD drive no longer closes.

Throw it in the trash?

Or:

1. Reinstall Windows from scratch, then add Google Chrome, GIMP, EchoLink, Java, Eclipse
2. Move the task bar from the damaged lower section to the left of the display
3. Close the DVD drive with tape
4. Add more memory, 1GB can be had for less than $30

Voila, good as new! Not really, but good enough for the shack, plus its speaker system is nice for watching online movies.

Damaged Display	DVD Drive that won't close
Task Bar at left, avoiding Damaged Display	"Fixed" DVD Drive