Thursday, March 6, 2014

Step aside, MacGyver!


I am so totally MacGyver right now! Okay, so, not really. MacGyver was an “action-adventure hero” and, well, I’m not. Plus, I got my solution from YouTube…but I had to put the research time into it!

So here’s the story, I know you are sitting on the edge of your seat: at the elementary school I work at one of the special education computers (bought specifically for them) was having an audio issue. One of the kids had broken off the tip of the audio jack inside the headphone port. Since the computer thought that something was plugged into that port, the back headphone/speaker port wouldn’t allow audio to work either. So I removed the machine and brought it to my office to work on it. I didn’t know what could be done because the audio ports are self-contained and I truly didn’t want to have mess with replacing the whole front.

So me and Google (to quote Crocodile Dundee, “we be mates”) got together and I saw a video on YouTube that shared using either a Q-tip or a toothpick with some Superglue. I tried the toothpick method but since the part that was “presenting” was rounded, that didn’t do any good. Back to search on YouTube. I ran across one video that proved that the pen is mightier than the sword!

In this YouTube video, he suggested opening up a Bic pen and snipping off the end (the part without the ink).  First, you make sure that the tubing fits over the jack piece (and you might get lucky and get the thing stuck inside without the next part.) Then you use a toothpick to swab Superglue on the inside of one end of the tubing. Next, you put the tubing in the port and pressed down until you feel it snap over the jack piece. Let the glue set up for about 20 minutes. Then pull it out. Ta da!
 

County Office is super proud of me. Me? Well, you already know that I’m feeling pretty MacGyver-ish. I even looked up the MacGyver theme music and played it (mostly because I realized that I didn’t know it and what I was singing to myself was the A-Team theme music) while I dance around my office. Which bring me to another couple points…truly, TRULY glad there are no cameras in classrooms (my office is a converted classroom) because I would have majorly embarrassed myself with my big girl booty dance and major pats on the back for managing to use Superglue WITHOUT gluing myself to anything! Woo-hoo!

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