UE Megaboom repair-in-progress

So I was given a gift. A box full of technology pieces anywhere from 3-5 years old. Among the booty was a gently used UE Megaboom bluetooth speaker in the original cylindrical packaging.

I was able to use the device for a couple of weeks without appearing to need to charge it. Although I had less and less confidence when it kept telling me it had 100% battery. That couldn't be true as I kept using it.

Eventually it stopped working. The speaker only work when plugged in if it worked at all. The fact that the Megaboom stopped working sucked for me because I have a JBL Pulse and a JBL Pulse 2 and neither of them are as solid in the bass department as the Megaboom is.

I left it plugged in for a day and it wouldn't charge. Still functioned plugged in, but nothing when unplugged. I poked the internet and pleasantly enough found similar solutions on google and duckduckgo. So after watching a few youtube videos and skimming over several ifixit tuts I pried mine open.

First was getting used to what I saw in those videos. Popping the charge controller board out of the butt end of the Megaboom didn't take too much effort. A couple of little blue pry bars from the ifixit tool kit I have and I could pull it up off the battery and the main board.

The battery wouldn't budge when pulling on its plastic pull-tab. So I got my needle nosed pliers and carefully pulled it out by its connector. I left it disconnected 12-15 hours and tried the method of testing the charging board I'd seen in a couple different videos.

I reseated the charge board as it was but without the battery inside. Then I attached the USB charge connector to the charge board and it began to flash the white LED charge indicator. So that meant the board was not borked.

After waiting a while I reattached the battery to the board and then reseated the whole shebang inside the main housing. Pressed the board down by its rim where the seal is, trying not to touch the capacitors or the ports on the board.

Once the Megaboom was reassembled I plugged it back in. The charging light blinked for about 30 seconds and then went dead. Nothing happened when I tried to power it on. It wouldn't even power on plugged in, as it had before. So I left it  alone plugged in but not blinking the charge indicator, and went to bed for the night.

Upon waking up again the Megaboom still sat there unblinking. I disconnected the charge cord and pressed the power button. It came on, turned red, and said it was 40% charged. This is the first time I ever heard it say anything but 100%. I thought this was a good sign and turned it back off, replugged the charger.

It did the same thing. It blinked as if it began to charge and then within 20-30 seconds went dead. I left it a while. I came back an hour or two later and it was unblinking. I unplugged it and tried to power it on. This time it was just red, said critical battery, and powered itself off. I don't know what's going on with that battery but I ordered a replacement and I've left it charging.

Weird thing this last time? The little white charging indicator on the bottom right next to where the micro USB cord goes in? It kept blinking. For well over a minute, maybe two before I had to move along to the next thing.

As far as I know it's still blinking away in there now.

Maybe I can recondition the battery it came with, maybe I need to yank its butt off again and stuff a new battery inside. It's painfully clear the battery pack is just a couple of 18650s with a custom connector on the top and a teflon patch over the butt end where they're soldered together. Probably wouldn't take much to rebuild it if I had soldered since high school - I have zero confidence in my soldering skills today, I want a refresher course on that skill.

I don't have the desire to appear on camera and videoblog this content. So I'm'a dump it out in text. More to come. The Megaboom isn't repaired yet...

wherever you go... there you are.

I think I've fallen out of love with mac os for good this time. The hardware is still pretty decent, when they make anything I actually want and can afford... a narrower gap all the time.

I just finally crawled that little bit further from my cobbled together box of donated parts that comprised my first peecee. The first thing I could call my own computer that wasn't a mac, an apple, or a texas instruments. I bought an ultrawide monitor a year ago.

It refused to work with my mac mini from the go. I found out I could reverse track and downgrade my mac os to regain functionality lost in a recent "update." I felt a year ago about as I do now. F.. no!

I pushed the aging frankenbeast box I've been pc-ing on for the last few years across my desk to the ultrawide, slowly gathering dust since the mini wouldn't work with it. Lo and behold Mint Linux has no issue just working right out the box with zero command like tweaks or control panel installs and endless reboot loops the mac mini required to even see flickers of progress.

I'm done with it. Macintosh user experience has been infiltrated by bloat since OS 8. I've spent so many install experiences undoing half of what the defaults are that I've decided mac os is unnecessary, redundant. Windows 10 is less of an issue.

Don't get me wrong, windowz is still a mass-produced product intended for the masses. It is nothing better or majorly worse than mac os. I prefer mac because the colors and fonts are less gaudy and sharp edged. Truth be told I've never liked the color palette or font treatment in windows going back to when it ran on top of DOS. It's always been ugly and grating. Win 10 is no different, just desperately wants to be...

My needs led me past Ubuntu to Mint Linux and I'm pretty happy with it. Minor issues can be solved with minimal education, minimal effort. Compared to some of the bending over backwards I've tried to do in the process of creating, maintaining, and finally failing and giving up on the hackintosh... this is just so far from that howling chaotic mess.

Mint works. Mac OS X is good, and while it used to be clearly better than windoze, now it is only just... and that's a shame. I was once an unapologetic mac fanboy. I just know how little of their default install cruft is useful, and how many other solutions I seek out and install as a "first-thing" after any new install or reformatting mac os x.

Chrome. VLC. Audacity. XBMC/Kodi. Transmission.  MediaInfo. Handbrake. MakeMKV.

The majority of these solutions, apps and such are available for both linux and windows alongside mac. It's far rarer than it once was to find something that doesn't try to be [at least in beta] for all of the big three operating systems...

So yeah. I'm attempting to claw my way out of my own private rut. To stop being so reclusive and participate out in the world some more this year. To complete more projects, read more books, take more walks, and exercise more. Color outside the lines, make mistakes without immediate fear, and try to learn new things and keep growing as a person.

Oh and watch more Rick and Morty... sometimes the masses actually have a point about something. How weird is that?!?!