Fixing my laptops display

By Josh Highland in hacks, hardware, Josh's Rambling, tutorials

repair_laptop.jpg

Last June, I got a new (used) Toshiba M55 laptop.

I got it for an awesome deal because the hard drive was broken, and the screen flickered a lot. I figured for the price it was worth the gamble, even if I had to replace the screen it was still a bargain price.

The hard drive was DOA, and was replaced immediately. I installed Ubuntu 7.04 Gusty as the main OS with windows as the second OS. Easy enough to do.

The screen flickered a bit, but if i messed with the lid enough, moving it back and forth, I could get a good picture. Over time the picture just got worse and worse. It was time to do something about it. I did a quick google search and found a Toshiba M55 LCD replacement guide.

I figured it had to be something with the connections on to the screen or board because when the screen was working, it was working good. The image was great, but it took a bit to get it there.

I followed the guide exactly. I powered it on when I had it torn apart and it worked! It seems that there was to much stress on the LCD cable connection, causing it to freak out when the lid was in specific positions.

I followed this guide to open up the keyboard. (steps 6 – 8 only). I was able to give the cable a bit more slack, and every thing started working like it should! I put it all together and it’s like I have a new laptop, and all it took was an hour of my time and the guts to do it. I should have cracked this thing open 6 months ago if i knew it was going to be this easy!

I hope this helps someone else with a similar problem.

my new (used) laptop

By Josh Highland in hardware, Josh's Rambling

toshiba_satellite_a100_le4.jpg
Over the last weekend, I overhauled a “broken” laptop that I got of craigs list for a steal. Its a Toshiba m55. 1.6 ghz pentium M, 1 gig of ram, wide 15in glossy screen, 2 batteries, charger, needed a hard drive, $200… stoked! (I replaced the hard drive with a 120 gig western digital)

I’ve been wanting a laptop more and more recently because I feel like I could be getting things when I am away from the notPop Labs (aka my computer room). I end up spending a lot of time on my cell phone (t-mobile mda … http://www.mdaTweak.com), but never really getting anything accomplished. Now I can use my phone as a cellular modem, and use my laptop to get some work done.

I think having a decent laptop also opens me up to the world of coffee shops. I always seemed to do my best school work in a coffee shop, lets see if that holds true when it comes to working on my personal websites.

Look out world, Josh Highland is computing wirelessly now again (this is my 4th laptop in 10 years)!

update: On top of getting the laptop for a great price, my friend Luis Majano just hooked me up with a super sweet laptop bag for it. woo woo!

Macbook Pro – Make an external monitor your primary display

By Josh Highland in mac, tutorials

Recently, I got a mac laptop at work, which is sup[er sweet, but I wanted to hook it up to a real monitor, keyboard and mouse. All very easy things to do. The problem I had was that the laptop was acting as the primary monitor. Every application that I drug over to the secondary monitor worked great, but the application tool bar was still on the laptop.. annoying.

I did a quick Google search to see if there was a solution to the problem. There was, and it’s dead simple to put into action.

Connect the external monitor

  • Start up the “System Preferences” app
  • Click on “Display Preferences”
  • Within Display Preferences, choose Arrangement. You should see two blue squares that represent each display, main and secondary. On the main display you’ll notice a bar along the top.
  • Click and drag this bar from the Main Display to the Secondary Display.
  • Close Display Preferences
  • That’s it!

What Happened To My Knee

By Josh Highland in Josh's Rambling

I really screwed up my knee, and this is the story:

On January 28th 2010 I went to see my friends band play, Sleeping Giant, I was getting loose on the dance floor (not in the way your are probably thinking). I got knocked off balance and my knee bent sideways. When it happened I heard a very loud “POP” noise. I instantly fell to the ground. I got back up to my feet quickly, stood on my leg and in instantly buckled under my weight. I crawled a short distance, and then was carried by friends to a chair. I sat in the chair, writhing in the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. In time the pain subsided and I was able to walk, although with a slight limp. I wasn’t in any real pain, just discomfort. I was able to drive myself home from the show. I thought I had just sprained my knee. There wasn’t even that much swelling.

Over the course of the next week, my knee got stiffer and my range of motion became limited. I developed a very pronounced limp. I figured it was time to have a professional look at it, so I went to see an orthopedic doctor who specializes in sports medicine. He looked at my knee and instantly told me that me that if felt like my ACL was torn and my meniscus was ripped, but he wanted mt to get an MRI to see exactly what was going on inside my knee and what needed repaired.

From the time I got the MRI and saw the Dr for the reading, 2 weeks had passed. When he came into the room with me and cut straight to the point

“Your ACL is pretty much non-existent, your meniscus is torn, but most importantly, your femur has become necrotic and part of it had died. You need to stop walking on your leg and i need you in surgery ASAP”.

As he started to explain it all, I wanted to pass out. He told me that when my knee dislocated, that my femur and my tibia slammed together, and the femur took most of the impact. The soft tissue in my femur had swollen to the point that it cut off blood supply to one the condyles on my femur, and it started to die. AWESOME. The Doc went on to tell me the treatment options available based on what he saw inside my knee at the time of surgery.

  1. less then 1cm of dead bone, remove it and let it fill back in by itself
  2. more then 1cm, less then 2cm, remove the bad area and take a bone plug from my leg and fill in the bad area
  3. replace part of the femur with a cadaver bone

Needless to say I was freaked out about everything.

I did all the preOp stuff and 4 days later I was in surgery. I don’t do well with anesthesia or narcotics. The next 3 days are a blur with moments of clarity mixed in. I’m glad that my wife was there to care for me. I was tripping really hard on the drugs and there are some funny stories about that, but that’s a different post all together. At one point I am told that I was screaming “I AM A CYBORG” while posturing like King Kong with my arms over my head. I don’t remember any of it.

The doctor said the surgery went well. He got into my knee and saw that my femur did have some dead tissue, but rather then doing the bone grafts now,  he is going to wait and see if it starts to regenerate on it’s own. He is going to re-examine the issue when I get another MRI to see how the cadaver ACL graft is working. My new ACL used to belong to a young man who died. Yes, that’s right, I have part of a dead guy in my knee. Frankenstein style.

It’s been almost a month now. I wear a brace that keeps my leg locked in extension (no bend), and goes from my hip to my ankle. It makes it really hard to sit up in a chair for an extended period of time. I lay down for about 22 hours a day. I’m lucky that I have a nice laptop and my boss lets me work from home, but the situation is still very frustrating.

I do about 2 hours of physical therapy a day. With any luck I won’t need a second surgery, and the doctor will allow me to start trying to walk in about 3 more weeks. I wont be 100% until October, almost 9 months after my surgery.

So far it has been a long and trying road, and I still have miles to go. My advice to you, NEVER blow out your knee!

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Here is what the surgery I went through looks like

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8EpT3uCVWU[/youtube]

This is actual video from inside my torn up knee

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rie3aqc0xAM[/youtube]

I got a Drobo!

By Josh Highland in hardware, Josh's Rambling, Tech, video

I have entered into a relationship with a new piece of high tech equipment, Drobo. Drobo is a self proclaimed “Data Robot”. In technical terms its a ASD (Attached storage device) running a custom version of RAID 5. When coupled with a DroboShare, it becomes a NAS (network attached storage) device.

In non tech terms, its an external harddrive that is expandable (up to 16 terabytes!) and can keep your data secure. The droboshare allows your computers to connect to it over your home network.

In the past I have blogged about how I love backups and how having good backups have saved my ass. The Drobo is the next evolution in my backup strategy.

I have recently moved away from my Windows Vista desktop and started to use my new Mac Book Pro as my main computer system. I eventually want to retire all the desktops on my network and run only laptops. I wanted to find a solution that was robust, expandable and allowed all of y computers to share a pool of data. After doing some research on popular NAS setups, I decided to go with Drobo.

One of the things that I liked about Drobo was how mindlessly easy it is to add more hard drives to the system. It’s so easy that I shot a video of myself adding a terabyte of storage in less then 30 seconds.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4QlNkzyhlI[/youtube]

Right now I’m just testing the Drobo / DroboShare out. Once I get acquainted with it I’m sure there will be more blog posts.