I dropped and shattered one of my 'free' Mason jars that came with Classico pasta sauce. It's not fixable because, despite my complaints, Classico switched to lug-style jars and doesn't sell their sauce in the nice reusable ones anymore. I'd have to actually pay for real (empty) Mason jars if I wanted to replace it. : (
Luckily, I still have plenty of extras, but still...
pedantic caveats
Yes, I know the jars aren't really 'free' if I'm paying for the sauce.
Yes, I know I ought to just make my own sauce instead of using store-bought.
Yes, I know Classico jars are technically not as thick/strong as real canning jars from Ball etc. and shouldn't actually be used for canning.
Yes, I know lug-style jars could be reused too; it's just that they aren't compatible with the universe of Mason-style canning jar attachments.
My WiFi AP broke when my friend she plugged the wrong power cable in and cooked it.
My edge router seems to have a corrupted filesystem. I think its fixable if I flash the os. If its not then I might need to replace the storage again which would be annoying.
Oxo good grips dish scrubbing wand. Ive had it for years and countless head replacements, it had electrical tape around the handle where the soap button broke 2 years ago. It had a good run.
My cat. She grew up with me every day of her life and just last week a work trip pulled me away from her for the first time. She hasn't left my side since I got back. I'm not sure if she will ever be as carefree as she was and I'm mortified I broke her spirit.
I broke a display. More specifically, a shoddy Chinese NVR box broke the display's main scaler chip by sending a voltage spike down the HDMI cable as it was being plugged in. It wasn't an expensive display nor even mine (it was at the local hackerspace), but I was bummed out because it was one of the few good displays we had over there so I figured I'd see if I can fix it.
My knowledge of electronics isn't great, though I've seen enough Louis Rossmann videos to know the basic principles, so I spent some time troubleshooting it with, and I expect this'll get some flak given that this is Lemmy, the help of AI. I described the problem and what caused it to the AI, took some measurements off the board with its guidance and even figured out how to measure it with an oscilloscope to confirm the diagnosis. This way I could narrow the problem down to the main scaler chip -- by all accounts a pretty common problem with this brand of monitor, though this one hadn't failed so spectacularly.
I ordered a brand new chip from Aliexpress for a total of 15€. I did also find a full logic board on eBay, but it came to over 30€ with shipping and the photo showed it having red marker on top of the very chip I was looking to replace which made me suspect it could have failed QC or was torn out of a broken monitor, so I didn't want to risk it.
After a couple of weeks the chip arrived and it was time to try my hand at BGA soldering for the first time ever. I couldn't find a hot plate so I had to do the whole thing with just the hot air station making it harder than it should have been. I managed to tear off three pads taking the old chip off somehow and had to very carefully fix those with some fine copper wire carefully manipulated with tweezers and a crafts knife under the microscope. Against all odds after I got the new chip soldered in, the display worked perfectly on the first try. The success felt pretty ecstatic.
My band saw. I didn't do anything wrong (I swear!). I hadn't used in it many years, and when I turned it on it made a horrible broken/about-to-explode noise. I checked inside, after turning it off, of course, and the rubber "tires" that go around the pulleys were dry, hard, brittle and cracked. The blade had come off the pulleys, that was the scary noise. You don't want power tools making noises like that, trust me.
My drain was cleaning slowly, so I pulled out my sink stopper to fix it. Youtube said this would take 90 seconds. Which it should, if you are able to hook a pivot rod into the hole in the stopper without looking at it the first time. I wasn't able to do it at all. I asked boyfriend, and he got it close but I don't think it is quite right. When we put the nut back on, the sink was leaking. I told landlord. Landlord said he sent someone out. I trusted him. I finally noticed the leaking is still a problem when my tampon box was soaking wet. I pulled everything out, and there is mold under on the cabinet. I used some mold spray. The mold does not come off, but the vinyl coating on the plywood does. I don't want to take the sink apart again and potentially make it worse.
So. Ruined cabinet, leaking sink, because I wanted my bathroom faucet to drain. Yay.
Keurig coffee maker. Tried to descale it per the instructions and it just quit. It was fixable though - turned out there was a blockage in one of the intake lines, so no water was getting to the heating element and the thermal breaker was tripping, cutting power to the whole thing. YouTube and other posts were helpful, and it sounds like this is not uncommon, esp if your area has hard water.
My first one killed itself during descaling, and I got a warranty replacement that then started having its own problems. Eventually I gave up and switched to grinding beans and making Japanese pour over iced coffee. It tastes way better and I don’t have to feel guilty about polluting the environment and dealing with that shit.
Broke the stove top igniter switch... Not the control switch or the igniter.. the igniter switch. If you're confused now I needed a diagram to understand the part I needed so I could order the right part number. It showed up yesterday and I swapped it out and my burner lit up just fine. I was happy with that.
Looking at the part replaced, I broke it pressing too hard down and crushed something.
The cheap plastic hinge of my kids lunchbox lid. I fashioned a makeshift hinge with a drilled hole/bent nail. Lasted long enough to get a new Bluey bento box as a replacement.
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