Doug's Sounding Board

A few weeks ago the microwave door wouldn’t latch shut anymore. Since the hooks in the door were intact and seemed to be moving okay I figured it was the latching mechanism. So I took it apart and took out the latching mechanism but nothing seemed to be wrong. Still, I called around to appliance parts stores and even though I was going to need to bring it in for proper identification, the total would be under $10. While it was out I held it and ran the door into it so I could get a good look and realized that the hooks weren’t settling down into the latch which meant they must be pulled down. Shaking the door yielded a rattling noise so I opened it up and found the spring on the bottom. The hook on the door frame that it latched on to was torn off. I guess that tiny plastic tab wasn’t enough.  I went to the store for some appropriate glue, found about a hundred kinds of glue depending on what kind of plastic you have. I had no idea so I settled for one that claimed plastics in general and had a strength of 2300 lbs/sq in.  It was an epoxy without the nasty smell, 90 minutes of work time and 6 hours for complete ready to use time. It’s worked perfectly ever since!

The broken thing was the Blackberry Pearl I had for work. It was still in my jacket when I washed it. I took it apart made sure it was dry, re-assembled it, and it would charge the battery and blink some status LED but that was it. Then I followed the directions I later found that said to put it in a sealed comtainer with rice and put that over something warm like a DVR  for 5 days. That definitely pulled more moisture out and the backlight came on and some bad looking streaks showed on the LCD and then it was back to how it was the first time. I now fully admit it is dead and just when I was getting used to the keyboard and starting to appreciate the e-mail features.