I finally got around to repairing (again) my headphones.  As I noted, after the cord snagged on a chair, the left and right channel wires broke from their contacts, though the ground was still attached.  I kept meaning to fix them, but then I got used to the earbuds that originally came with the iPod.  They were by no means as good as my real headphones, but they did the job, and I was lazy.  Yesterday, however, they inexplicably lost the right channel completely, and it quickly became time for the repair job.

The physics electrics lab wasn’t there to supply me this time, but my brother was, so I borrowed his soldering equipment.  The first step was to remove the solder from the last repair job from the contacts, since I was reattaching it to the same plug.  Instead of the copper wire that we had last time, he had a handy little pump thing.  You primed it by pressing down on a plunger, then touched the tip to the heated solder and pressed a button, thereby sucking the solder into the depths of the device.  (After a quick google, I’ve found that it’s called a “solder pump,” or the somewhat sillier “solder sucker,” and looks like this.  The wire we had before is a solder wick.)  Since we had no reason to use the solder wick, I can’t compare the two.  I can say, however, that the solder pump worked pretty well, removing the majority of the old solder.  It did leave a sort of solder sheen on the surfaces, but that wasn’t a problem.

Then came the same process as last time, with a few modifications.  First was how I dealt with the tension relief, the fibers around which the wires were wrapped.  Last time, my roommate unwrapped the wires, cut out the tension relief, and then twisted the wires back up.  I tried that at first, but I’m apparently not as skilled as he is, and I ended up with scraggly looking wires that weren’t working well.  I stripped some more of the plastic coating and started again, and this time didn’t bother to unwrap.  I just burned off the painted insulation with a match, which I think probably burned out some of the tension relief as well.  Undoubtedly, most of it remained, but it didn’t seem to be a problem.

Unfortunately, I did have to go through the “making sure the channels are right” procedure again, and once again, I had them wrong the first time.  This time, though I wrote down which way they go, so I can do it right if I need to do it again.  On my headphones, at least, the red wire goes to the longer contact, the green to the shorter.  It was also easier to switch them and get them back through the holes of the contacts because I had some very fine-tipped tweezers.  A helpful tool, those.

Finally, this soldering iron was a bit trickier.  The first one was adjustable by a dial, so it could be set however.  This one could be set as either low or high.  Low wasn’t working, so I flipped it to high, but that was still problematic.  heating the surface and touching the solder to that, as I was taught, wasn’t working, so I ultimately had to melt the solder onto the soldering iron and then spread it around on the surface that way.  It gave me a workable join, and the headphones sound perfect, but it did result in some large and unwieldy solder lumps.

All in all, I’m glad to have my headphones back, and I’ll look out for attacking chairs from now on.

Bollocks. I’ve broken my headphones again.

I was in Sharples (Swarthmore’s dining hall), and walking up to bus my try. The curlicue cord, dangling from my pocket, got caught on a chair back as I was walking by, and pulled my up short. Everything looked fine, but when I tried to listen through them, nothing came through. Once I got home, I opened up the plug and found that while the ground was still attached, both the left and right channel wires had pulled off of their contact points. Well, now that I know how to solder, I can fix it on my own. I just need to get hold of a soldering iron again.

I preregistered for classes today–sort of, at least. My schedule for next semester was going to be Acting II Monday afternoon, Latin seminar (Aeneid) Wednesday afternoon, and Directing I Friday afternoon (plus a likely fifth course–maybe intro to Comp. Sci. or intermediate Greek). For a while, the Latin seminar was going to be moved to Monday, but after surveying students, the department found that Wednesday worked best. Unfortunately, the theater department didn’t follow suit when they changed Directing I to Wednesday afternoon at the last minute. As of now I’m registered for all of those classes, regardless of the conflict. Come next September, I’ll need to talk with people to see if one of those classes can be moved. Otherwise I’ll have to put off Directing until the fall of senior year, which would require a whole bunch of schedule juggling. Grrrr, theater department.

Also, my blockmates and I didn’t get any of our desired blocks for next year. When we got our lottery numbers yesterday, we found out why–they’re terrible. Because we blocked together, we have a series of six numbers in the 760s. Rising Junior numbers cut off at 800, so we’re going to have bad luck picking rooms. Also, our housing lottery is Monday at 7:30, the same time as my Movement Theater class. Grrrr, housing.

Regardless, the semester is almost over. A week and a half of classes, followed by reading week and exams. I don’t have much work left, now that my final seminar paper is done. I’ll have a lot to do to prepare for exams, though, what with catching up with all the Latin reading that I haven’t done. I’m looking forward to a month in which to do nothing before I head up to camp.

My roommate did acquire a soldering iron. I had expected to have to go into the electrics lab with him and maybe, if I was lucky, be allowed to solder. But the lab instructor just handed over the soldering iron and the accompanying business to Bevan. He brought it back to the room, and after setting up a workstation of a slate tile to keep from burning the wooden floor, he proceeded to teach me to solder. We followed an excellent guide I found for changing a headphone plug. We differed from it on only a few points–the wiring in my headphones had tension relief material in it, which looked like tiny threads, so we had to separate that from the actual wires and cut it out before doing anything. Each “wire” (left channel, right channel, and ground) was actually made of a bunch of small wires wrapped around the tension relief, and each of the small copper wires had some sort of insulation painted onto it (except for the ground, which was uninsulated). Filing was working to get it off, but going very slowly, so we resorted to touching it to a flame, using pliers a little way down the wire as a heat sink, and that burned it off quite quickly. After that, it was a matter of getting tiny wires through small holes, soldering all of the connections, and screwing the pieces of the plug back together. I now have perfectly working headphones, and can proudly say that I fixed them myself (and with Bevan, of course, who had all the knowledge and did much of the work.)

Never having soldered before, the thing that surprised me was how quickly the actual soldering went. Touch the iron to the wires and heat them, touch down the solder, let it draw in, and then the connection is done. What did take a long time was setting everything up. The iron has to heat up, and the insulation has to be stripped, and the work station prepared, and proper lighting acquired, and a helper to hold the work (If you do not have, as we do not, a soldering stand), and every time you put the iron down for a while, you need to clean and tin it again. I suppose that like everything else, it’s all in the preparation.

I’m back at school after doing not nearly enough work over break. I’ve found that I have perennial trouble doing the reading for my Latin seminar. I mean to, but get distracted by a book, or the internet, or even just sitting there and not really doing anything. I go away and realize this problem, decide that I just need to buckle down and do Latin, without checking my email or wasting time, but it never happens.

If you hadn’t heard, Terry Pratchett has early-onset Alzheimer’s, and is donating half a million pounds to a fund to search for a cure. While looking at different articles on that, I ran into a link to a program called Folding@home, which is trying to find a solution to the misfolding of proteins, which can cause Alzheimer’s among other things, by using the spare computing power of volunteers who download a program to their computers. This led me to the broader category of distributed computing, which is this process of letting your computer work in something in a network of other computers during its downtime. My computer runs pretty slowly as it, is, so I think I’m using most of what it’s got and won’t be joining any of these, but there’s a list of distributed computing projects here.

Also in the category of fun things to do with your extra (or not) time online, a while ago I wandered by way of steampunk into Instructables. Users post step-by-step instructions on various projects. I was fascinated looking through what was there, but don’t foresee having the time to attempt any of them any time soon.

In other news, I think I’ve found a source for a soldering iron (the physics electrics lab, courtesy of my physics roommate, who presumably will also teach me how to solder), so look for that fixing-my-broken-headphones update soon. It will potentially include pictures, if I can get my hands on a camera. Funny how I don’t own any of the things I need for this venture.

So after getting home last night, I was lying on bed and using my computer, listening to music through headphones. I moved my computer so I could get up, and it suddenly slid off my bed and hit the floor. The computer itself was fine, but the headphone plug had broken off inside the jack. It had snapped off a good quarter inch down inside, so I couldn’t manage to get hold of it with anything. Unfortunately, because the bit of metal was still in there, the computer was still trying to play audio through it (which obviously was impossible), and not through its speakers.

Said computer is a MacBook, for which I bought the AppleCare extended warranty. AppleCare has definitely already paid for itself several times over, but I figured it wasn’t about to cover this. So, careful not to leave any evidence of tampering, I started removing the approximately seven thousand tiny screws on the case to see if I could remove the keyboard panel to push the piece out from the inside. Apparently, there are some hidden screws somewhere, because I was unable to get it off, and I gave back and replaced everything.

I also searched for stories of similar problems online, and found suggestions to put super glue on the end of some small thing, stick it to the piece, and pull it out, among other things. I wasn’t quite ready to go that route yet, but other people said that the jack inside had an open back, so the piece could just be pushed out, which gave me heart that the repair might ultimately be easy (and thus not too expensive).

This morning I called the Apple support line, and was told I’d have to bring it in for service. After making a few phone calls, I found that the closest place open on a Saturday was the Apple Store in Natick, a half hour drive away. So I made an appointment online, and headed out to the Natick Collection (which used to be called the Natick Mall before someone decided that didn’t sound upscale enough).

I got there and showed up at the Apple store, where I was told they were running about five minutes late. They seem to have underestimated, though, because I was waiting there for a half hour. To their credit, they did have a manager check on what was causing the delay, and reassure me that I would be seen soon. When I made it up to the counter, the service guy told me that indeed, AppleCare wouldn’t cover it, and the only way Apple would fix it would be by replacing the whole logic board, which would run me $700. Apparently, the back of the jack is closed up on a Macbook, so no easy push-it-out-from-the-back solution was forthcoming. He suggested getting a tiny drill bit, drilling a hole in the broken piece, screwing a tiny screw into it, and pulling it out that way. He also brought out one of the little flashlight magnifying instruments doctors use to look in your ears, and showed me that it looked like there was a little nubbin of metal protruding from the center of the piece, which maybe could be grabbed by small pliers. Thus, I left the Apple store, my head hung, problem unsolved by the experts.

At this point I took a detour to Radio Shack to pick up a new 1/4″ audio plug so that I could repair my headphones. More on that in a future post, once I get hold of a soldering iron.

I went into the Tools section of a nearby Sears and examined their selection of pliers. There was one that just maybe would fit in, but I wasn’t ready to spend $10 just yet on a tool I would only use once. I tried Kay Jewelers to see if they would have any small pliers, but no luck. I had similar disappointment at the jewelry counter of the Lord & Taylor next door, but the woman there suggested a craft store, or perhaps the bead kiosk elsewhere in the mall. Once I had ascertained the location of said bead kiosk and arrived, I was told that no, they didn’t have any pliers small enough to fit in my computer’s audio jack, but that I might try Times Square around the corner.

Now, Times Square, as it turns out, is a watch store. A tiny little watch store on the side of the mall, maybe the size of your standard Sunglass Hut. What they did have is a guy working at a little bench in the tiny space behind the counter. I explained my problem and handed over my computer. After a minute or two with tiny tweezers and other mysterious tools, he did what the folks over at Apple’s “Genius Bar” were unable to do without $700 dollars from me, and removed the piece of headphone from the audio jack. And he wouldn’t let me pay him anything for it!

So I walked off, and checked that my computer now played through its speakers (it did), and stopped in the Apple store again to use a pair of headphones from an iPod display to check that it would play through the headphone jack (it would), and had a computer as good as new. Well, not quite–the plastic to one side of the headphone jack got bent over when the plug was shorn off–but as good as can be expected.

So my advice to anyone with a similar problem would be to forget the computer folks, forget super glue and tiny drill bits, forget opening up the case yourself, and take the computer over to your friendly neighborhood watch maker/fixer. Well done, good sir at a little work bench in Times Square. Well done indeed.