Menu

First Click: I am an electronics god

May 25th, 2016

8

I feel like a god. Note that I used the lowercase “g” god, not uppercase. I’m not the proper noun God, for crissake. I’m not a surgeon. I’m just a lowly man with a portable USB hard disk drive that I resurrected from the trash heap.

All it took was some patient Googling and YouTubing. Time I have, and I’ve solved enough issues in my life to know that without the hunt there can be no feast. We rarely appreciate the things that come too easily — it’s the battles won that we relish. Besides, I’ve grown weirdly fond of this little 1TB disk. It’s the hard drive I bought after hanging out with its designer, Philippe Starck, back in 2009.

Slowly I made progress, ruling out external issues one at a time until ultimately I had the disk dissembled and separated from the controller. It was then that my expensive engineering degree paid off. "Ermahgerd," I thought, "the USB cable is like, all wiggly in the socket." So I took out a pair of pliers and gave the exposed USB socket a little squeeze. Voila, now that the cable was making a snug fit and my Starck HDD was back in reliable operation. Worship me and my mastery of all things electronic!

Look, I’m a dummy, I know that. I should have figured this out before taking the unit apart. But I’m also a hero because I took the time to fix something, resulting in money saved and ego engorged. You laugh, but there’s scientific evidence to suggest that people capable of assembling Ikea furniture feel the same rush of accomplishment as the guy that invented both the Aeropress coffee maker and Aerobie flying disc.

No, really:

"In four studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate boundary conditions for the IKEA effect—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their amateurish creations as similar in value to experts' creations, and expected others to share their opinions."

Hear that Mr. Alan Adler? You might be a 77-year-old genius inventor in everyday life, but on this day we are equals — as I’m sure everyone will agree.

Five stories to start your day


  1. Microsoft lays off hundreds as it guts its phone business

    Microsoft is signalling the end of its Nokia experiment today. After acquiring Nokia's phone business for $7.2 billion two years ago, Microsoft wrote off $7.6 billion last year and cut 7,800 jobs...

  2. Google’s Project Ara is about more than just modular phones

    I had exactly half an hour with four people from the Project Ara team at Google I/O to extract as much information as I could about the mission to actually launch a modular phone. So I rattled off...

  3. Apple is reportedly building a Siri speaker to rival Amazon’s Echo

    Apple is working on its own competitor to the Amazon Echo to give consumers a Siri-powered speaker for the home, according to a report from The Information today. Not only that, but Apple is also...

  4. The Dodge Viper is dying, but it's going out fighting

    Could there be a car less "today" than the Dodge Viper? Of any vehicle found on a production lot, this two-door, two-seater is the most throwback; the most analog. It will never be associated with...

  5. A Silicon Valley billionaire is reportedly funding the legal war to end Gawker

    Gawker Media was ordered to pay $140 million in damages to Hulk Hogan — real name Terry Gene Bollea — in March of this year over the company's publication of the wrestler's sex tape. The case was...

God of the day