The Unified Theory of Shiny?

[denny]

It appears that I am hovering around the critical Shiny Thing horizon of my life. Last night, when I took my aerotech juggling balls off of the charger, I found that one of them had split really badly. This morning, my iRiver has started working again. The Shiny Thing balance of my life therefore remains fairly constant. I now fear for the safety of any new gadgets I may obtain.

As far as the ball is concerned, a guy at Spitz tells me that they had a bad batch of batteries about a year ago which heat and expand when charging. He's had two of his split exactly the same way - aerotech apparently replaced them with no argument whatsoever, so hopefully this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

(Incidentally, Spitz was so incredibly fucking cold that I'm probably not going to be going any more, until the weather turns around. This is a bit of a downer, as it's the one thing in the week that I looked forward to.)

The iRiver worries me more, despite the fact that it's now functional. It definitely was NOT working yesterday. I couldn't turn it on, it didn't light the screen when plugged into USB or its charger, and it couldn't be mounted as a USB hard drive under Linux or Windows. The same applied this morning when I brought it into the office. It failed to show up under USB devices on my colleague's Windows machine the first two times we plugged it in. The third time it was connected, the screen lit up with 'charging', and the device now appears to be fully functional, although claiming to have absolutely no battery charge whatsoever. Bit odd for something that was left on charge overnight 2 days ago and hasn't been used since then.

I'm not even sure what could be wrong with it now, but if it's going to be something intermittent, the chances of me getting it replaced are pretty much zero. This could get very very annoying.

Comments

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my Green-Blue proball did that too. I sent it back and got it sorted.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Tis my blue/green that's gone. It sounds like it shouldn't be a problem to get it replaced anyway... I'll probably drop into Oddballs tomorrow, I've got the day off work and I'll be in North London anyway.

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

iRiver: sounds like a dodgy connection somewhere. I'd suggest on the USB connector normally, though some of the symptoms suggest elsewhere in the power/charge circuit. Try wiggling or shaking during play to see if that affects the problem. (Wiggle leads and push gently in any direction where there's slack, shake unit robustly (it's solid state right, so that ought to have zero effect), if the batteries are replaceable prod, rotate, push them in all available directions.)

You could probably just resolder an obvious loose connection yourself, but if you can duplicate the problem they should replace it in the first instance. Problem then is that it's likely to be a consistent manufacturing problem - at some point it'll just be easier to accept a void warranty and start fixing it yourself.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

It's a hard-drive player, so there are some moving parts. It doesn't rattle when you shake it though :)

I think a dodgy connection on the internal battery seems most likely.

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

Ah. Then shaking it is probably a less good idea :-)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it could do with a visit from Mr. Hammer.

shiny keyboards

[deano977.livejournal.com]

If my brain is working right I seem to remember you looking for clicky keyboards some time ago (although I reserve the right to be making this up); saw this (http://www.3elimited.com/modern/items.asp?CartId={8AE3CA1B-B44C-40A9-B434-E90D51637EVEREST150}&Cc=6&CatMoveby=0&Nbm=&Pbm=&FromNav=) in a magazine today and thought 'oo'. Did you have requirements other than clickyness like it being ps/2 or something?

Re: shiny keyboards

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

You're correct, but there were other requirements. In order:

Clicky
Ergonomic
USB
Cordless
Black

The first two are absolute requirements, the rest are in order of how much 'this would be nice too'.

Your link seems to be dead, btw.