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Category Archives: life in general

Hey, remember this?

I finally fixed up LeeEv, but not the “right” way.  As in, I didn’t order any Alienware parts like I had been planning from Dell or from a third party vendor.  Instead, I got a 5$ tube of epoxy putty from my local hardware store and remade the hinge mounts with that.  I used maybe an eighth of a tube of J-B Weld Co. KwikPlastic Adhesive Putty Stick.  It was quite easy to do and cleaner than if I had used an epoxy resin.  It does stick readily to everything, so be careful around your desk, clothes, fingers.  It pays to cut your nails before handing that stuff or you’ll be digging out from under your nails.  The knife I used to cut portions of the putty off still has stuff stuck to it.  But once it cures, it’s quite strong.  I can open and close my lid now with no problems.  No crackling, no creaking, no weird pieces of plastic falling out.

Like a lot of other people who have used this fix on their hinges, I’ve opted for the “industrial look” and I won’t be putting the front bezel back on.  It looked kind of cheap with it on and I rather like the aesthetic of the screws and mounts exposed.  The light bar around the side of the LCD panel looks nicer like this too.

You’ll note, however, that one nut on both the left and right sides slipped while the epoxy was curing.  The putty didn’t shrink appreciably while it was curing, so I must have put them in misaligned and didn’t notice.  Sugh.  In the interest of not stripping the head of the screws, I didn’t force them in.  I did end up stripping one screw before I noticed how badly misaligned the corresponding nut was.  I have more than enough screws anyway, since there are an extra two that keep the bezel in place and I’m not using those anyway.

Incidentally, Dell has fully refunded my account and apologized profusely for always getting my order wrong.  I doubt anything will be done about the underlying cause though.

And did you come by looking for a post yesterday?  There wasn’t one.  You might have noticed that.  It’s because the Lettermo challenge is over and we’re back to the MWF posts now.

So, I went and did this…

Yes.  I made a hand rooster.  Aren’t you proud of me?

But anyway, work has recently been rather stressful for me as we are once again trying to meet a deadline that passed about 1.5 weeks ago.  Even though it is passed, they have not set a new deadline.  No, we are supposed to meet the one we’ve already missed.  Everything should have already been done yesterday.  But we’re obviously late, because it’s already today.  So yeah.  Things are hectic and stressful.

I tend to deal with stress by hoarding anger.  It’s not a particularly good way of dealing with stress.  I don’t recommend it.  I mean, what do you do with all that anger you’ve hoarded?  It’s not really something useful.  You can’t make stuff out of it.  It’s just a big waste of storage space.  But I am loathe to let things go once I’ve expended the effort of acquiring it.  I have to let it dribble away while I’m concentrating on something else.  The problem is, I’m quite capable of thinking about several different things at once.  This hampers the dribbling away process.  BUT!  I have found that concentrating on not making a mess takes a lot of effort, during which time I am not at all concerned about my stash of anger dribbling away.  Thus…I have decided to concentrate on not making my fingers a mess.  Also, I like to play with nail polish.

Here’s a good tutorial, in case you’re wondering how I made my hand rooster’s tail feathers so marbley.

Things I learned:

  • I didn’t use a base coat of white.  If I had, the blacks would have been blacker.  But as it is, you can see that my nails are marbled and this was good enough for me.  Also, it saves time.
  • Watch out for bubbles when you drop the nail polish into the water.  When you’re making your whatever design into the rings of polish, don’t use the area with bubbles.  Otherwise you might end up with a bubble on your nail that will either dry as a lump or pop, and then you won’t have polish on that area at all (this happened on my index finger and I filled in the empty spot with some white).
  • If you use a quick drying top coat over wet polish, it may have a tendency to run the different colors together.  I hear that some quick drying top coats don’t do this.  Sally Hansen Insta-Dri will do this (this is most evident on my pinky and middle finger).  But you can still use it.  Just make sure you load up your brush so you don’t end up dragging the bristles over the wet polish underneath.  It will take a bit longer to dry than the advertised 30s or whatever, but you’ll have clean, defined lines in your marbling.
  • I think I like the darker nails better.  I especially like how my index finger turned out, minus the small hole from the bubble.  I don’t like the horizontal marbling on my middle finger.  It reminds me too much of a zebra.  I also don’t like the predominately white ring finger.  You can’t really see how my thumb turned out, but the design looks a lot like the strata you’d see on a cliff.  It think it looks too busy.
  • This doesn’t take nearly as much time as you’d think.  Especially if you get lazy and decide to dip two or three fingers in at the same time.