Problem solving

There's something deeply satisfying about knowing how to solve a problem.

By rights, I shouldn't be writing this post at the moment.  Our laptop was involved in a study on Newtonian Physics, Repeatability and the Scientific Method.  Translated: it was dropped.  And in the process, the power cord was somewhat damaged:

Note the radial divergence of previously homogenous long chain polymers.  i.e., the plastic is cracked.

Without going into a long and boring post, suffice to say that at one point in the evening, our laptop looked like this:

That's quite an angle between the keyboard and body

A small after-market bit of rework so I could push the contact up far enough to work properly again

But with a bit of help from my trusty multimeter and drill, a single 1.5 mm hole and some re-installed screws later and it's back working again.  In fact, since we replaced the battery as well as the power cord, it's even better than before!  And much cheaper than replacing the whole thing.