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Repairing something is not worth your life, so if in any doubt, just don’t. Get a professional in, or at least someone who values their life less.
Then give up (or, if you are uncomfortable with that idea, think of it as a retreat).
This can be especially true of items that are cheap to replace. For example, you’re not going to see me wasting my time fixing a cheap cable or power adapter, or something like a cheap consumer network switch or router. Even if you can get the parts, by the time you’ve put in the time and money, you’re worse off than if you’d just replaced it.
Obviously, if the piece of kit is specific or customized in some way, this may not be the case, but for cheap off-the-shelf parts, there’s no sense in wasting time with an attempted fix.
10: Take care.
The gadgets around you are home to a number of dangers, from high voltage waiting to zap through your body, lithium ion batteries that are just waiting for you to short them out so they can blow up in your face, to dangerous chemicals that can cause you long-term harm.
Take the time to be safe. I routinely wear safety glasses because I intend to leave this world with the same number of eyes I came into it with. Also, after years of not giving a damn about my skin, I’m now a convert to nitrile safety gloves. And I’m super careful around high voltage, especially now that the “hair that sticks up” look is out of fashion.
But all jokes aside, do take care. Repairing something is not worth your life, so if in any doubt, just don’t. Get a professional in, or at least someone who values their life less. I’ve seen a lot of nasty things happen with CRT tubes and capacitors and high voltage and lithium ion batteries — stuff that looks awesome in a YouTube video, but isn’t so awesome when it happens on your living room table.
Only the other day I was fixing a busted Bluetooth wireless speaker, and I can tell you that I was much happier continuing with the repair once I got the lithium ion battery pack out of it in one piece. These things are in everything and are safe until you cut into them, bend them, stress them, or short them out, at which time they can become horribly unpredictable.
Stay safe!
If you’ve got a cool tip or story to share, feel free to leave it in the comments section.
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