Fixing things

My beloved Mac Mini died a while ago. The hard drive went out, so it failed to boot but I had it backed up (Go Time Machine!) so I didn't lose anything. This would be a pretty epic failure for most, but I'm a computer guy so it wasn't a huge worry for me.

This weekend, my car's dashboard lit up with a "Check Tire Pressure" dummy light. I was freaked. I thought sure it would be a trip to the dealer, a couple hundred dollars and/or lost time to get it fixed. (I really didn't assume it was ACTUALLY just tire pressure, but that's because cars are a mystery to me.)

Well today, I fixed both; and I'm quite pleased with myself.

I ordered a new laptop hard drive from Amazon, cracked open my Mini, detached the WiFi antenna, unscrewed the mother board from the housing, detached the hard drive, slid in a new one, and got everything back together and it works!

But the thing that really stressed me out, was this car light. I couldn't see any difference in the tires so I thought it was a bad sensor. But when I took the pressure of each tire and compared it to the manual, I discovered that the front driver side wheel was 20 psi when it should be 35. So I filled it up with $.75 of air and the light went off! It's called a dummy light for a reason.

So tonight I'm celebrating the small victories in life. Here's to proactive backups and easy car maintenance!