So, my Toshiba had a fit about 3 weeks ago and gave up the ghost. As it turns out, the DC jack pin cracked away from the housing (check out the picture for the villain here). The cheapest service I could find started at $99. Parts, labor and the time without my PC were not really on the top of my list of things to split with for more than a few days. Well, a little research led me to a nice little website with wholesale parts; the jack ran a little over $21. After I got the part, which in and of itself was a little process, I realized, even though my dad had been kind enough to leave behind is soldering gun and some solder, I didn't have any solder wick. With the part in hand, I decided I'd try and get my merit badge for PC disassembly and self repair. (I think that merit badge also passes for the one with bravery/stupidity mark on it.) Having never opened a laptop before, it was a little risky, but I knew exactly what was wrong and it was not any different from the board repair I used to have to do on control boards at Advendtech. It took me about 3 hours to get to the jack. The process of undoing the PC was quite roundabout. I realized this when, after I completely reassembled it in 15 minutes, I had to disassemble it and it took me about 20 minutes. To keep from jumping ahead too much, I had to head to my trusty Radio Shack. I picked up a nice 40 watt solder gun with replaceable tips, 5 feet of wick, some copper solder, a desoldering vacuum and a heating desoldering gun. I'd never seen a desoldering gun with a vacuum bulb on it and, having had issues with solder in the past, knew how nice a tool that would be to have. (So, any of my friends that need solder gear, call me up!) Even though I completely cleaned the solder, it took me a while to get it off for fear of cracking the board. It was in the board very snuggly. It did come off though and I managed to get the new piece in. So, for about $58 I managed to repair my Toshiba. As a matter of fact, I'm using it to make this entry right now! That's about the most exciting thing I've done in a while aside from some C# info I've dug up that makes a little program I'm working on that much closer to coming together.