Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on… by its LED display

My microwave oven started to malfunction at around five years old. It started to randomly power on the lamp, fan, and turnable. It progressively got worse over several weeks until it was mostly stuck on. The microwave oven is not usable when this happens: It behaves as if the door were open, causing the control panel to ignore button input and to stop cooking if it was cooking. The obvious suspect is a failing door switch, but was not the cause of this failure. The microwave “turning on by itself” was caused by an aging/failing LED display. Yes, really. . . . → Read More: Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on… by its LED display

BIND patch for Mandriva 2010.2

Yay, another security vulnerability in old software, this time in many versions of BIND. Here’s an RPM for Mandriva 2010.2 that upgrades BIND to 9.9.7 P2 (from 9.7.6). . . . → Read More: BIND patch for Mandriva 2010.2

Bash bug patch for older Mandriva distros

Bash has bugs. Unfortunately, the bash parser was exposed through environment function importing, which had the potential for remotely exploiting the parser bugs. There’s been a series of patches for these issues. I’ve compiled packages of bash 4.3 for older versions of Mandriva Linux. . . . → Read More: Bash bug patch for older Mandriva distros

RTL8192CU and Linux 3.13.10

Hardware: TP-Link TL-WN823N v1.1

Status: As of kernel 3.13.10, the in-tree rtl8192cu driver (in drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi) is still broken. It will work and connect, but will silently disconnect after some time (and light traffic?). There is also some packet loss (around 1%). The driver provided by Realtek (8192cu) works much better. . . . → Read More: RTL8192CU and Linux 3.13.10

Thinkpad X61 Tablet LCD Bubbles

The Lenovo Thinkpad X61 tablet with the “12.1-in Super Wide Angle SXGA+ TFT display with 1400 x 1050 resolution” option uses a BOE-Hydis HV121P01-101 AFFS display with glass bonded to the LCD panel. The display is prone to developing bubbles in the adhesive layer in between the LCD and glass. There’s a long thread at Lenovo forums about the bubbles and the difficulty of getting it replaced or repaired. Here’s my case of bubbles . . . → Read More: Thinkpad X61 Tablet LCD Bubbles

Ikea “Laver” Chair repair

Ikea “Laver” chair. $10. Metal frame, “PP-CO” (polypropylene/polyethylene copolymer?) seat and back. Spots near the two front corners are high-stress and fail (crack) easily. This is a repair attempt . . . → Read More: Ikea “Laver” Chair repair

Samsung Linux CUPS USB Printing

Ever since upgrading from Mandriva 2010.0(?) to 2010.1 (and also 2010.2), both of my Samsung laser printers have been intermittent. Print jobs would often be silently discarded. CUPS logs show that the print jobs are completed, the printer would warm up, the printer’s LED blinks once or twice, then the print job is “complete”. But nothing gets printed. . . . → Read More: Samsung Linux CUPS USB Printing

PSU Fan Control

The Sparkle Power SPI270LE Flex ATX power supply has a rather noisy 40 mm fan that that is temperature-controlled to reduce noise when cool. The fan control circuit failed and powered the fan at full speed regardless of temperature. . . . → Read More: PSU Fan Control

USB Port Repair

The USB port on my laptop was broken by dropping the laptop onto something plugged into the USB port. It has been repaired by transplanting the core from a donor USB connector. . . . → Read More: USB Port Repair

Spam

Spam is profitable. With sufficient advertising by email, there will be some people who respond and generate revenue. Push the conversion rate lower still, and spam may become unprofitable. . . . → Read More: Spam