The Lance J. Technoweb

A few weeks ago I tried to wonder why I run my dishwasher overnight.  I set it to run at about 4 AM or 5 AM, and it finishes up by 6 AM or 7 AM or so.  Here's a conclusion of my analysis. Electricity is more efficient overnight, and therefore costs less and emits less carbon. Power companies produce less electricity at night due to lower demand.  During the day, they produce more electricity. As for-profit entities, power companies want to use as little fuel as possible - after all, their biggest expense is fuel. So the plants that they run all the time are their most efficient plants, and the plants that they add during peak times - during the day - are their least efficient plants. By running my dishwasher over night, I am guaranteed to be using the power by the most energy efficient power plants. Winter Heat / Summer Heat My dishwasher releases quite a bit of waste heat and moisture.  Most of that heat from the dishwasher stays in my house.  By runn...

All my regular readers know that I love the late 2009 and mid-2010 white unibody MacBook notebooks.  They're robust, they're still very capable, and they can still run the latest MacOS. One problem with these old beasts is the bottom rubber can detach.  Apple used to provide free replacements, but that program ended more than a year ago. So what do you do to fix the bottom?  It's easy!  Here's what I did: Remove the bottom plate by removing the 8 bottom screws. Fully peel off the failed rubber and fully expose the aluminum. Use small pieces of permanent tape on the "back side" of the lid to cover the drill holes in the aluminum. Fully clean the "exposed side" of the aluminum plate. Apply small stick-on rubber feet to each corner. Coat the "exposed side" of the plate with several coats of Plasti-Dip spray paint .  I picked red, but there are many colors available. Re-attach the bottom plate to the laptop. There we go!  Now I ha...

I repair a lot of equipment - mostly smartphones and laptops.  I'm no genius and I have limited expertise.  But I do know how to do quality work - making sure that the result is no worse than where we started from.  I am happy to say that I've rarely made something worse. Not everyone is so good. I've acquired a lot of equipment that was ruined from "home repair" people.  Don't be that person. Here are the things I've seen: Missing components and screws. "Lost" small parts floating around inside a machine. Mistakenly disconnected cables. Welded parts mistakenly pulled apart. If you're going to do a home repair, do good work.  That means you need to be patient, triple-check your work, and use reputable procedures and guides (which universally means NOT YOUTUBE!) Here are my tips: Get good repair procedures well before you begin.  These should be written procedures with photographs.  Youtube is good, but is NEVER a substitute ...