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10/5/2009 Sansa FUZE 4GB Trial Many local libraries have, in the last few months, greatly expanded their offerings of audible materials that can be downloaded from their websites. I have recently learned to use Audacity from sourceforge.net, and I can now generate an MP3 from anything I can hear on my computers. Now that the number of great free audible materials has gotten so large, I have become interested in MP3 players to handle this material. NewEgg last week offered the Sansa Fuze 4GB player as a refurb'd model. I ordered it Monday night by EggSaver shipping & received it Friday afternoon. Initial experience was good, but it died by 9 pm that night, wouldn't turn on or respond to any commands. Sent it back by First Class Parcel Post with an RMA number, as of Monday pm, it had arrived at NewEgg's facility. The Sansa documentation leaves a bit to be desired, and I found it hard to follow.
I downloaded the image above from Sansa, and added my own labels to make it more usable for beginners to figure out how to use it.
Once I get a working model, I think I will enjoy it, and am looking forward to borrowing audio books from my local libraries. Recliner Commandomobile
I wonder if this is the same guy: Man Pleads Guilty to Lounge Chair DWIDULUTH, Minn. (AP) - A northern Minnesota man has pleaded guilty to driving his motorized lounge chair while drunk.A criminal complaint says 62-year-old Dennis LeRoy Anderson told police he was operating his customized La-Z-Boy and "that he was coming from the Keyboard Lounge after consuming approximately eight or nine beers since about 2 p.m. that day... Prosecutors say Anderson's blood alcohol content was 0.29 percent, more than three times the legal limit, when he crashed the lounge chair into a parked vehicle in August 2008. He was not seriously injured. Proctor Deputy Police Chief Troy Foucault says the chair was powered by a converted lawnmower and was equipped with a stereo and cup holders." Gas Powered La-Z-Boy At Oshkosh Flyin 2005 from Hafast on Vimeo. Keeping an antique truck on the road. I bought an F250 pickup with a diesel engine new in 1983. It has 160,000 miles on it and gets 22-25 mpg when its bed is empty. The conventional wisdom is that the engine can easily be run for 200,000 miles without needing major repairs. When it passed the age of 25 it no longer needed to have biannual emissions tests done in my state. The major cost of keeping it going is repairing the things that have simply worn out. In 2008 the exhaust system developed multiple leaks and I fixed those by replacing the muffler and the tailpipe. A few weeks ago I took it out on the road & had the unnerving experience of having the clutch pedal go to the floor and then had great difficulty shifting from one gear to another. Once in gear, though, the truck ran just fine, only shifting had become very difficult. I thought this was due to the truck's hydraulic clutch activation system, which has already been replaced once, about 20 years ago. I had the same problem then. I had this done at a local shop, but this time around I'll try to fix it myself. I spent a lot of time on the internet informing myself about the problem. I posted some queries at the forums on the Ford Truck Enthusiast site. I created a video of the firewall motion at the clutch master cylinder from Youtube. The problem was well known enough for Ford to have issued Technical Service Bulletins over the decades, and I came across some of these in my search. I am posting everything relevant here to assist others in solving similar problems. 1/31/2008 Trucking12/27/2007 Persistent Power Jack Defects in Many Laptops This entry is an anthology of information about this widespread problem. Here you may find links to local repair shops, repair guides, images, comments from other blogs, and a general orientation to this issue. It presumes a basic knowledge of simple electrical circuits.
************************************************************ My Toshiba M35X-S149 laptop developed a defect in its power jack for the 3rd time in 16 months, this after 2 repairs/replacements of its motherboard, and after a court-ordered extended warranty expired. Google searches on this issued indicated this is a widespread problem. Links to websites discussing this issue will follow in this space.
My own story:
I "fixed" my own Toshiba M35X-S149 laptop which had a defective
power jack. I used the guide to disassembly of this model mentioned in the comments. I was positive the power jack was the problem, since it had happened twice before, with a new motherboard & then a resoldered power jack repair which did not last. My attempts at desoldering weren't of much use until I sawed the old power jack into 3 pieces. Then I was able to desolder the smaller remnants. After the mounting holes were cleaned I soldered two new leads of flexible wire direct to the motherboard at the positive & negative holes,
put a loop in the wires for strain relief, brought the wires out the back of the case
so that they formed a "dongle", then soldered a "chassis-mount" power jack (one that fit my AC adapter) to the ends of the wires.
To my surprise, the computer booted up, and is still working. The job is very poor-looking, but works just fine.
I did my repair fully aware that I might fatally damage the motherboard in the process, but I was unwilling to pay for another "professional repair" in a machine out of warranty. The hardest part of the entire process was removal of the defective power jack from the motherboard. The only tools I had were a soldering iron and a syringe-type solder sucker (illustrated).
A basic guide to desoldering may be found by clicking here. If you haven't done it before, secure a circuit board from some discarded electronic device and learn your basic technique on it by removing components as quickly & neatly as possible.
It would have been much easier with a more specialized de-soldering tool attached to a vacuum.
Once the power jack was removed & the holes in the motherboard cleaned, soldering a new power jack is fairly easy, but the process leading up to it was not.
The way to prevent this problem in laptops would have been to either stabilize the power jack so it can't be dislodged by repetitive minor trauma or put a flexible connection between the power jack and the motherboard, as Lenovo has done in their 3000 series.
The Lenovo power jack (the yellow round socket in the image) is visible from the rear of the machine, but is not attached directly to the motherboard, but has a bundle of leads that plug into the motherboard.
The Apple (MacBook) power jack assembly seen below is similar, but the contacts are held to the power "plug" by magnetism. The power cord can be yanked forcefully away from the laptop without any damage to the power jack. However, the wires connected to the power jack can still be damaged if excessive direct traction is exerted on them.
See this video of the MacBook power connector in action
Yanking on a cable attached to a plug (as shown in this video) is never a good idea. Better to push, pull and/or rotate the plug, which is designed to take that strain.
These seem far better engineered for durability than run-of-the-mill laptops.
Of all the fixes I came across on the internet, this one was the most straightforward and also the crudest:
Nice video showing the whole process on a laptop very similar to the one I have focused on in this post. The difference in this video is that the power receptacle was replaced with a new one, I simply bypassed it with a wire to supply strain relief, not to mention it was much cheaper than buying a new replacement receptacle. 12/15/2006 Reclining is best for your backReally?
The Claim: Sitting Up Straight Is Best for Your BackBy ANAHAD O’CONNOR
Published: December 12, 2006
THE FACTS Sit up straight, parents tell their children. It’s a well-known refrain, repeated through generations and based on the theory that anything other than a 90-degree posture places undue strain on the back. Skip to next paragraph
Leif Parsons
Despite its persistence, that advice is wrong. Parents may insist that sitting up straight with your thighs parallel to the ground is the best way to sit, but a long list of studies has shown that that position increases stress on the lumbar disks in your lower back. Thirty years ago, scientists first showed this by inserting needles into the backs of volunteers and measuring the amount of pressure created by various seating positions. They found that a reclining position was ideal, placing the least strain on the back and minimizing pressure that could lead to back problems. Since then, multiple studies have confirmed that finding. But it was only in 2006 that scientists produced direct visual evidence. In a study that used new magnetic resonance imaging machines that allow people to sit instead of lie down, a team of researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland looked at 22 volunteers who sat in three positions. The first two positions, sitting upright and sitting with the body hunched forward, produced the greatest spinal disk movement, causing the internal disk material to misalign. The third position, in which the subjects reclined at a 135-degree angle with their feet planted on the floor, created the least strain. According to the study, any position in which a person leans back, opening the angle between the thighs and the back, is preferable to sitting up straight. THE BOTTOM LINE Sitting upright at a 90-degree angle strains your back; leaning back places less pressure on the spine. States I've been toThe states I've visited so far are in red on the image. The last state I added to the list was Nevada in 2005, where I went to my nephew's wedding. Video - I've Been EverywhereLyrics: I've Been Everywhere, Johnny Cash
2/7/2006 The Nihilist's Creed1. There is no such thing as truth, and that's the truth.
2. Even if there were such a thing as the truth, no human could grasp or understand it, and that's the truth.
3. Even if a human grasped the truth, he could not communicate it adequately to another, and that's the truth.
4. If you don't agree with me, I'll make you pay for that, and that's the truth. The Ultimate Answer to Every QuestionThe simple answer is there's no simple answer. Human Nature and DemocracyDemocracy never promises perfection. Democracy has never promised anything--except choice. NEWSFLASH. People make bad choices. They make bad choices all the time. They don't even (gasp!) act in what is obviously their best interest an awful lot of the time. This is frequently referred to as "human nature". Quote from Dr. Sanity found somewhere
Photo is an image grap from MEMRI. A Hamas spokeman exults over his party winning the recent Palestination election, then issues his party's demands on the rest of the world, one of which is... |
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