Sometimes It Takes Patience, Persistance, and a Whole Lot Of Shuffle

Fighting through challenges as a creator

Tonight, I am burning the midnight oil. In fact, it has been more like burning all the oil in the Gulf of Texas in the past few weeks.

Let me explain.

For anyone that does not know by my writing by now, I work for myself. I have created several ventures for myself over the course of the last year that I started here on Medium, and I am not done yet by a long shot.

When one works for themselves, we become co-dependent on technology at our fingertips to function when we need it.

However, sometimes life has other plans that lead to a rollercoaster.

The landing and the signals

When my wife and I first got hitched in Colombia, I had brought my trusty old Macbook Pro with me. It has traveled near and far with me, and has been a rock through at least 5 countries now.

However, when we got to Colombia, I got the dreaded service battery error.

Of all the years that I worked in tech before I decided to take the leap to just my photography and entrepreneurial adventures, I should know better than to ignore such a thing as a warning on a machine that says the battery should be serviced.

Yet, the force with my Spanish was not that strong yet, and when we did get around to inquiring how much the battery would be to replace, the couple places we tried said they would need to guard my laptop for at least three days to a week and order the part.

I was not a fan.

As someone who has worked on machines before, you don’t understand what goes on behind closed doors with service techs.

In my years working on machines and doing technical support I had seen people steal OEM parts, and replace them with cheap knock offs, I saw people purposely install malware and keyloggers on customers machines, and worse, I saw people rummaging through people’s personal files in search of ahem… we’ll just say “contraband.”

Why didn’t I report these people you ask? Because I was young and I was scared as shit about retaliation if anyone found out it was me that ratted them out, or worse, I was scared that I was going to lose my job.

So as I mentioned, I am NOT a fan of having someone else work on my machine especially with client data on it that I have vowed to protect.

The downhill slope

I blatantly ignored the battery and kept working on it for almost a year and a half now. Stupid, I know.

It got to the point where the battery dangerously started to swell, and it straight up would not hold a charge any longer, which caused the boot sequence on my laptop to keep recycling to the black Apple screen repeatedly until I took it into safe mode, or tried to reset the SMC which got me back to normal for a day before the problems repeated.

And deep in my gut I knew that this was it. This was the end of my ignoring the battery issue, and it was time to get it done.

How did I get around the people stealing my shit and very bad shenanigans at the repair shop you ask?

Well, quite frankly, it is not my first rodeo around installing computer parts and how computers function.

Honestly, it was as simple as finding out the correct battery model number that I needed, and finding a shop that would sell just the part to me without forcing me to have them install it.

My wife and I went to the local tech hub here which is a mall of nothing but computer stores. It is a gamer, hacker, computer nerd, and techies dream to go there. They have everything, and I do mean everything.

It took us three shops exactly before we met a couple of kind folks at one of the Mac repair centers that would sell me just the battery I needed without shoving install services down my throat.

I bought the battery for half of what I would have paid for it in the States in fact, and I was off and running.

The hell of the install

Let me teach you all a lesson here. If you deal with computers or anything technical that you need to repair like this. Check the part number three times and install once.

It is like the old saying of measure twice and cut once in wood working.

I was stupid and I checked the system information hastily to the point where I was so sure of the battery number that I needed that I persistently insisted at the store where the folks sold me the battery when they tried to tell me the right battery that I needed.

I was hellbent on getting the battery that “I” thought was the solution.

Well, after getting it home and finally sitting down to install it with the help of a Youtube video, I found out a valuable lesson.

They were correct.

In all honesty I dropped enough F-bombs that the hippos in Hacienda Napoles probably heard me many hours away from their location as they guard the gold that lays beneath their watery cove.

The realization set in. I fucked up.

The return

After I came down from red hot F-bombs to glowing amber from my mistake, I sheepishly explained to my wife that we would need to go back to the store and exchange the battery because I fucked up.

She has been very kind for all of the time we have visited Colombia to be my translator for when I just can’t find the words in Spanish to help me figure out what I need.

I had promised her a nice calm day at home while I worked on my new battery on my projects, and here I was about to put her on the go again.

She made me take a photo of the existing battery in my laptop to take with us to show the shop this time, and said that there was no way we were going back a third time.

I sheepishly with my tail between my legs agreed, and we headed back to the shop.

The people at the shop were more than accommodating. They remembered us immediately, and quickly produced the correct battery and verified from the photo that we brought with us of my existing battery.

It turned out to be a slight bit more expensive for the battery that I actually needed, but it is still about half of the cost of what it would be in the States, so I am a happy camper.

We got the correct battery, had a delicious dinner at a near by restaurant that caught our eye after I eyeballed the Royal Enfield Himalayan motorcycles from across the street that I had wanted since before we got hitched in Colombia, and returned home.

A couple hours ago I began the install.

Let me just say that Apple uses super glue when they put a battery in place in the case. I bought a cheap plastic spatula from a dollar store for around 500 pesos that I was able to pry the battery gingerly out of the case with.

Yes, you can find cheap things everywhere here thankfully.

The new battery was as simple as removing the paper on the new adhesive, lining it up in place to connect to the logic board, and then placing the battery cable and the touch pad ribbons back into place and a couple screws.

I nervously put the back of my laptop back together and flipped it over to test it. Would it fire up?

Like any new battery that is shipped in a box should, it showed that it needed to be charged. Never purchase fully charged batteries. It is a safety hazard waiting to happen.

I plugged in my power cable, and the system fired right up!

It is currently 78% charged as I type this, and I’ll give it the good old run on battery for as long as it takes to kill it and recharge it and kill it a couple more times to make sure it is conditioned.

Yet, for a total of $113 US, I was able to get back to my projects and get kicking.

If you would have asked me last week, I was so terrified about not being able to work that I was about to drop $2k+ on a new laptop that has a Spanish keyboard that I don’t fully understand just to get back to work. My gut and my heart told me that there was a much simpler solution if I only practiced patience.

I have to thank my beautiful wife also who graciously volunteered that I could use her laptop until I figured this mess out if I needed to work.

Thankfully we had a couple days of shuffling, and it is back to building websites, teaching classes, slinging coffee, and doing what I do best.

If you are reading this and have read this far, just remember when a similar problem comes up, don’t panic. Sometimes all it takes is patience, persistence, and a whole lotta shuffle to get the job done.

This week I hope to get back to my Raspberry Pi and Kali Linux project also. Stay tuned for a new update on that, and I will be holding a special on new website designs for a special package deal. If you need a website, drop me a note and I am happy to get a custom piece done for you.

Til the next adventure!

Charlie

P.S. If you dig reading what I write, consider jumping over to my main site at https://www.charlienaebeck.co and jump on my mailing list. You’ll get a free welcome package that has free things and coupons for my coffee brand https://connectedbycafe.com. I also share lots of helpful advice on the newsletter there through my program https://visionintovictory.com. See you there!