When your landlord’s cell phone is disconnected and his land line’s answering machine is constantly full, it doesn’t hurt to pick up a few trade skills: carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and now locksmithing. Yusuke and I mined our parallel ever-growing heaps of non-working tech to find the perfect screw to fix the deadbolt on the front door. It was either that or put on the old “pretend your lock is actually working” performance every day for the benefit of the hallway.

The winning screw came from the PCI card at top right. The computer that formerly housed the card is like a time machine. I might boot it up once every couple years. Mainly it’s there to show me what my desktop looked like back in 2003. The part of me that’s fighting against the pack rat part is only half ashamed of the part that’s proud of fixing the lock. That’s got to be worth a pile of broken cameras. Right?