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[personal profile] torin3
Well, a while back [livejournal.com profile] ladycaviar told me about civilization points and pioneer points. Civilization points are a rating of how well you can use civilization to get what you want. If your plumbing goes out, you might have no idea how to fix it, but if you have a lot of civilization points you know just what plumber to call who will come at 3 AM to fix it for you without charging an arm or leg. With a lot of pioneer points, you cannot only do that 3 AM plumbing repair with tin cans and bailing wire, but you can also add a garbage disposal using only a cheese grater and some copper wire.

Anyway, why am I bringing this up? Well, the nice 22 inch LCD monitor I had my computer suddenly died. About six months prior, it was getting harder and harder to turn on once it cooled down. So I set the computer to never turn off monitor. That worked okay, until it turned out I had to swap out video cards. Well, I wasn't able to turn it back on. Since it was out of warranty I opened it up and took a look. There were about five swollen capacitors.

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So, I went ahead and unsoldered all of the capacitors on the board, read their ratings, and ordered replacements. Total cost of the parts was $4.53.

They came in today, and here's what I did with them.

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And that fixed it! It works great now.

Not a bad use of my pioneer points, if I do say so myself.

Date: 2009-08-29 11:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lederhosen.livejournal.com
Woo! Nicely done.

Date: 2009-08-30 04:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] torin3.livejournal.com
Thank you! This looks like it's good to have some positive effects on my day job's responsibilities.

Date: 2009-08-29 11:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ladycaviar.livejournal.com
Cheese grater FTW, LOL

Date: 2009-08-30 04:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] torin3.livejournal.com
I thought you'd like the cheese grater comment....

Date: 2009-08-30 01:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mooselover13.livejournal.com
Can you call them pioneer points when what you fixed is technology?

Good job!

Date: 2009-08-30 04:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] torin3.livejournal.com
I would say so. The philosophy here is the difference between the two of them. Do it yourself, and get somebody to do it for you. Though this doesn't really touch on the concept of 14th generation apartment dwellers. They tend to lack both civilization and pioneer points.

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