I bought the Lipstick Power Adapter last year, and a while back it started acting up — it wouldn’t charge my ThinkPad X1 Carbon anymore. Actually, this problem is really annoying. First off, the adapter still charges: it charges phones, it charges a New MacBook, it charges a Switch, it can even charge a MacBook Pro. It just won’t charge the ThinkPad. Personally I figure it probably doesn’t support the PD protocol anymore. Thought about it for a bit, realized it was less than a year since purchase, so sending it in for repair was the only option.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2017 suddenly got hit with a recall notice. The reason given was “a screw inside the machine may come loose, pressing on the battery and causing it to explode.” Fine, loose screws inside a laptop aren’t exactly news. Even if it were loose I’d have opened it up and tightened it myself. The recall and the screw aren’t what matter to me. What matters is that I finally have an excuse to register IWS global warranty for the ThinkPad I bought from Japan. Delightful!

In my second year of high school I got 500 yuan of New Year’s money, and I wanted to spend it on something. While poking around TomPDA I came across a Sony Walkman E505. Seller said it was an OEM pack, bare unit, just over 500. 50 hours of battery life, and it looked good enough. So I bought it without a second thought. To be honest, at first I didn’t care much about the specs or the sound quality. I just thought it looked nice, and that 50-hour claim was tempting. I had an iPAQ Hx2410 at the time, but its battery life was a tragic 5 hours. This was 50 hours. Even with 320Kbps MP3s stuffed in it I could still get 20 hours. That meant I basically never had to think about the battery. One charge and I could mess around with it for a week. High school was miserable every day, so getting to listen to more music was heaven. To use a phrase people use now, it was a “massive happiness upgrade” kind of gadget.