Achilles' Heel, or, The Gift That Keeps On

Most computers have a tiny lamp somewhere whose job it is to inform you that electrical power is reaching the computer. On my Toshiba (a gift that Sara bought for me way back in 2005), the display looks like this (green on the left for power, yellow in the middle to tell me that the battery is charging):

Lately, however, something has been amiss. Unless I set the computer in just the right position, or wiggle the power cord just right, the lights look like this:

You got it: nothing. My computer had developed a faulty connection, somewhere near this dohickey on the butt end:

Now we must remember that after four and a half years of faithful service, bumps in the road are to be expected from computers. As my father-in-law quipped about cars (but applies even better to computers): "The wonder is not that they break down. The wonder is that they work at all." Such amazingly complex pieces of equipment are bound to fail. However, like good cynical British game shows, they're also bound to fail at the weakest link.

Power failure is not like a system crash, however. There's no recovery disk for lack of electricity. And since both of my batteries have retired to a second career as paper weights, lack of power to my computer presents a permanently fatal problem. So after two months of building anxiety, I decided to do something about it.

Funny: "doing something" about a computer problem, for me, always results in the same scene in the living room:

After a consult with Sara on finding hidden screws, I got the case open, and found the offending part. The post in the center of this female power link was really loose:

After further invasive surgery (during which I produced two fragments of plastic that I hope are not essential to the computer's function), I got to the innards of that part. The central post of the female power link connects to the internal wire by way of a piece of aluminum less than 1/32 of an inch thick. I found the weak point in my computer's hardware. After four years of jostling the cord in and out, and (I admit) a couple of walk-aways with the computer still plugged in, that tiny metal link had given up the ghost.

I don't have soldering equipment on hand, but I knew that only a small piece of wire stood between me and computer power. Where would I get thin, tough wire to patch this fracture?

It dawned on me that I had just spent several months making bronze wire cribbage pegs for Sara's anniversary gift. I rummaged for the remaining wire and a pair of needle-nosed pliers, then got to work. After about ten minutes of fumbling with wire, pliers, and electrical tape, I had what appeared to be a hunk of plastic with some bronze wire crammed into its very small contact post:

But it might just work. I reconnected the contacts to the computer, then plugged it into the AC adapter. Nothing.

Just before I was about to bring down a hailstorm of curses upon my errant machine, I realized that I hadn't plugged the adapter into the wall.

Kingdoms rise and fall because someone didn't plug in the appliance. After a self-deprecating comment, I made the final connection to the power grid and:

Voila! That green glow signified victory! My computer now had power.

I reassembled the shell of my computer, inserted all those impossibly tiny machine screws, and flipped over my small silver lifeline to the world. I jostled it, shook it (but not too hard), turned it, lifted it, and then set it down. Like a pair of weird but comforting eyes, my computer greeted me with its constant bichromatic glow:

Praise the Lord for improvised conductivity!

~emrys