A Geek Goes Flying

Navy switch opened I built a Tokyo 60 using the Durock T1 Silent Shrimp switches and the Drop+Matt3o /dev/tty MT3 keycaps (with Apple kit, natch). I like it a lot, as a silent tactile board, but I was getting the occasional, annoying, double-space-bar activation and/or, just by grazing the space bar, inadvertent actuation. At least one reviewer has encountered issues with “weak springs” with this switch and their solution was to swap in a Cherry MX Clear spring. Me being me, I decided to swap in a spring from one of the several Kailh Box Navy switches I have surplus. I’ve never done this before. I found this switch opener tool , which was advertised to work with Kailh switches, and confirmed it would also work with the Durock. This YouTube video shows just how easy it is; literally just position the switch on the opener and then press down. Pop, off comes the top. Couldn’t have been easier. And the Frankenswitch works exactly as I’d hoped: The spacebar requires just enough effort...

The circa-2011 Crucial M4 SSD in the 2012 Core i5 Mac mini I picked up used (and cheap!) for the office failed. It was running really slowly the night before, the next morning no application would open (the icons would just bounce in the dock, forever), and when I finally lost patience and power-cycled it, I got the dreaded blinking question-mark folder. Oh well. Picked up a Crucial MX500 ; 1TB seems to be the price-capacity sweet spot ($90). (Side note, the 256GB drive I was replacing was $299.99!) Swapping the same drive into the 2012 Mac mini server was a non-event, I could slip the old 500GB spinning rust mechanism right out. But the base model desktop was another story . Turns out I needed a simple, inexpensive, Mac Mini Logic Board Removal Tool to scoot the motherboard aside just enough for me to get the dead drive out. As long as I was ordering tools, I finally broke down and got a Wiha set . That, plus a set of cheap Chinese spudgers etc. I picked up a while ago ( Kaisi Profes...