Ugh, what a day. Work, blah. Lots of stress, hey I know you have it too. But then, a near-miss on my Rammy upgrade.

First, I saw the memory box on my frontdoor step. So I brought it in, opened up the DIMMs and powered down the Mini. Following, this guide the first step is to get your putty knife in there (yes a putty knife). I had gotten a fairly plain plastic putty knife from Home Depot for $0.89. A paltry sum, but an especially attractive deal for a Mac surgeon looking to expand his surgical implements to an inventory quantity of one.

Getting the fingernails in as the guide suggests is an act of insanity. Not even Fran Dresser has the superhuman titanium calcium extremeties required to bridge the smallest start of prying required to get a plastic putty knife in there. Scratches were made using a screwdriver and a knife but I wasn’t so concerned with taking my Lexus SUV off-road one a year. Soon, an edge was exposed after a considerable amount of effort. It was small progress, like a mailbox drop-off lid opened enough for the mailbox so say “enh” and no more.

With the lid somewhat loosened (loose like the Pope, meh), I worked the putty knife around the edges hearing the horrific Snap Crackle & Pop that so many guides had warned about. It was disconcerting, however with loud enough humming of It’s A Small World, I was able to repress my anxieties way down. Way, way down. But now rising slowly with an ETA 2028 in a therapy session on Saturn.

Soon the lid was off and I had to do a few more things, first remove the screws holding the DVD-R drive on. The whole thing is really no bigger than a laptop CD drive and it covers it completely like a protective blanket. Once de-linus’d, the blanket revealed several screws that had to be removed. And … that’s about the time that I realized a small plastic piece was laying next to my Mini.

Ah the rush of stress. The very same rush that I had just left at work! What joy! There was some circuitry on my desk! And not attached to anything! “A world of tears, It’s a world of hopes, And a world of fears“. It wasn’t working. I spun the mini around searching for where it was ripped off from like it was a Rubix Cube. Spin, spin, where did you come from, little piece of logic board?! Ah. The DVD burner. God damn it. I wonder what you do? Do you … say, make the DVD drive eject? Do you … say, make the DVD drive load? Or do you perhaps (and GOD WILLING), provide enterprise and scalable metrics to the operating system as a measure of notional reporting? Because I’m ok with losing that buzzword horse-shit.

Well, first patient on the operating table, I apologize for the hack job. But, I have to continue. I can’t just drop you off at 17th and H St SE and get $1.45 a pound. That’s just not right, especially in this economy.

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So I continued on. I removed the wireless lan adapter antenna. I removed some cable that does stuff. I removed the screws holding the DVD down. I found a bright place to put them and not lose them. I lifted and flipped the DVD onto a book as such in this pictured Mac Suplex. I removed the old memory (brand: hynix; read: generic). I installed the memory, and put it all back together and booted it up without the case on.

Booted fast as hell. Everything worked. Memory showed up.

Wait. What? So I ran the “More Info…” pictured there. I ran the diagnostics. I loaded a DVD. I ejected a DVD. I joined my wireless network. What the hell? Everything works. Cringing for an uppercut that never came.

So blissfully and ignorantly, it really was worth it. There’s no hard drive grinding when I do things. There’s no latency when running multiple things. It’s everything that a real desktop should be (cept *cough*games*cough*). I would do it again but I don’t know how I’d avoid breaking that piece off again. It’s pulling as hard as you can and being gentle at the same time thing.

Update:So I found out what that bit was. It’s the wireless module. And although it connects to my w-lan, it’s really flaky. It drops the connection and my reverse KVM thing flakes out (the mouse jumps everywhere). I’ll update this or remove it if I found out something different.
Nope. Now it works fine. I dunno.