y.st./source/pages/en/weblog/2015/05-May/30.xhtml

<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'title' => 'I finally return home',
	'body' => <<<END
<p>
	At long last, Yst Dawson is back!
</p>
<p>
	Let me start at the beginning.
	I was not and am not being held against my will.
	I was not and am not being kept away from the Internet by force or threat of force.
	Rather, I have been kept away from my home, Yst Domain, by mere technical difficulty.
	Three Mondays ago, my Lenovo ThinkPad X60s, my only terminal for updating this site and the contained <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a>, died on me.
	A little later that same day, my Samsung GT-I9300&apos;s mobile connection also expired, a full month ahead of when I expected it to.
	With these tho machines out of commission, I was entirely cut off from the Internet.
	I managed to register for a new mobile plan using my brother&apos;s laptop, which put me back on the Internet, albeit though a tiny difficult-to-use portal.
	However, this didn&apos;t give me access to my home of Yst Domain, and I was unable to reach my canary to feed it.
	Unfortunately, my canary died on me.
</p>
<p>
	I spent that time looking for a way to get a full laptop again, so I could return home.
	I looked into second-hand machines, but the ones I could find all had issues.
	Some were Apple products, which would be unlikely to provide a decent host for my Debian environment.
	Some were Windows machines, which would mean that I would be paying Microsoft for a Windows license, despite the fact that I would be wiping the Windows system from the machine as soon as possible.
	I wouldn&apos;t mind the extra cost if that money went to the recycling center, but I don&apos;t want my money going to pay for proprietary software if I can help it.
	The final laptop I saw ran Zorin $a[OS] and only cost \$99 $a[USD].
	However, this laptop&apos;s Wi-Fi card proved to be incompatible with Debian, due likely to needing proprietary firmware that Debian lacks.
	I can&apos;t plug directly into the home router most of the time due to its location, so working Wi-Fi is not negotiable.
</p>
<p>
	At one point, I mentioned my laptop dying to one of my coworkers, who I didn&apos;t know was a computer guy.
	He doesn&apos;t do software, but he says he knows his hardware.
	He offered to take a look at my laptop and to try to diagnose it.
	He took the laptop two days ago, and said he would bring it back at noon today.
	Thus ends the abridged summery of the current hole in my weblog.
</p>
<p>
	Today, he brought the laptop back with a diagnosis, as promised.
	He said that the issue was that the battery was dead.
	I explained that the battery had been dead for a while and that for that reason, I&apos;ve been only using it when connected directly to a wall outlet.
	He said that if that wasn&apos;t the issue, the issue was the power button.
	According to him, if the power button was functioning but something else in the computer was preventing a proper boot, the computer would stir to life when the power button was pressed, even if only for a moment before shutting back down.
	He said that if I could procure a new power button, which would only cost around \$5 $a[USD], either he or I could install it and the machine should come back to life.
	If I could bring him even an incorrect power button, he said he could jury-rig it and fix the machine.
	It wouldn&apos;t be pretty, but it would work.
</p>
<p>
	I didn&apos;t know where to get a laptop power button, and the local computer shops did not have one available.
	I tried online, but the only power buttons that turned up in search results were for the Lenovo ThinkPad X60 tablet, not the Lenovo ThinkPad X60s laptop.
	I would have even tried ordering one that said it was compatible with the Lenovo ThinkPad <strong>*X60*</strong> laptop, as I know the X60 and X60s have some interchangeable parts, but tablet parts don&apos;t seem like they would work in a laptop.
	Next, I went to the recycling center.
	They carry broken laptops that are sold for parts, in addition to their stock of working computers.
	I hoped to find one with a power button that was about the right size.
	Much to my delight, I found four such buttons on machines, one on a Lenovo ThinkPad T30 laptop and three on Lenovo ThinkPad X60 tablets.
	It seems that these X60 tablets are not the same thing as what we think of as tablets today.
	Rather, they are just laptops in which the screen can be reversed and the keyboard folded up behind the monitor.
	One of the tablets had its keyboard hanging loose, and I saw that the power button is actually a part of the keyboard.
	With this new knowledge, I thought replacing the whole keyboard shouldn&apos;t be too difficult, and chose the cheapest of the three tablets for \$25 $a[USD].
	The T30 had the right size of power button, but not the right size of keyboard, so I ruled it out.
</p>
<p>
	Once home, I dismantled what was left of the tablet, recovering the keyboard and two sticks of $a[RAM].
	Components such as the hard drive were missing.
	To be honest, I&apos;m surprised that the recycling center didn&apos;t take the $a[RAM] to sell separately.
	I took the keyboard off my own X60s, but I found that the keyboard came off too easily.
	The electronic strip that passes signals from the keyboard to the motherboard was not connected.
	Curiously, I connected the laptop&apos;s own keyboard and tried to power on the machine.
	Keyboard hanging out, the X60s stirred, bringing up the familiar $a[GRUB] error message about the system not being found (due to the full disk encryption).
	It lives!
</p>
<p>
	The recycling center doesn&apos;t take back broken laptops that are sold for parts, but I think the lesson I learned was worth the \$25 $a[USD].
	I&apos;ll keep the X60 tablet around in case the parts become relevant at a later date.
	I had everything I needed to fix the X60s all along, save for the knowledge.
	The mouse is built into the keyboard as well, so there is a strong possibility that fixing the connection has fixed my malfunctioning mouse as well.
	As of yet, I have not had it give out on me.
	It&apos;s also highly-probable that I disrupted the connection myself when I was attempting to clean out the keyboard of hair and other debris or when I was fixing the space bar.
</p>
<p>
	At this point, I think my to do list is clear:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>
		0: Process email
	</li>
	<li>
		1: Format and upload my offline logs of my time stuck away from home
	</li>
	<li>
		2: Work on my $a[PHP] syntax highlighting function so I can repair and upload March 21&apos;s weblog entry
	</li>
</ul>
<p>
	I think processing about a month&apos;s worth of email takes priority over formatting and uploading the low-level details of my time away, so that will have to wait.
</p>
END
);