My brother studied computer science and I'll I got was this dumb blog

My Ipod has taken a lickin' but keeps on tickin'.

I remember standing in the electronics department of Kmart, staring longingly at mp3 players when they first came out. Oh, attention Kmart shoppers.

It wasn't until 2005 that I received a first gen Ipod Nano for Christmas.

Flash forward almost five and a half years later and I'm still using the same 4 gb player. It does everything I need it to do. Sure, I'd probably prefer a smartphone.

The battery life was greatly decreased though, two hours which meant it wouldn't last through the day.

Ebay and 8 bucks got me a new battery and some blue, plastic tools to pry the case open. Youtube videos got my confidence up for the job.

I used the "Think System" at first. The battery sat around the house for a few weeks while I thought about changing it.

Then the click wheel started acting up. It wouldn't respond. I could turn the Ipod on, but then it would get stuck, I could reset, but nothing else. I thought that perhaps the battery was finally so low that it was affecting operation. It was time to act.

I very carefully removed the old battery, used a soldering iron to take the leads off the circuit board and then connect the new ones with the same solder.

I cleaned everything with a Q-tip and alcohol and snapped the case back into place.

Presto! It all worked!

For about a day.

Then the problems with the click wheel started again. Battery life was fantastic, but the click wheel was awful. I'd turn it on, it would reset, then it was unresponsive. I could reset it, but it wouldn't respond to controls.

I googled around and read all sorts of misleading ideas for fixes.

I opened it up again, tried to clean the back of the wheel with a Q-tip & alcohol again, put it back together - same problems.

Then today, I happened to read about a guy who cleaned his click wheel by cleaning around the edges.

So I took a post-it, shoved it in the crevice and ran it around the edge.

Some dirt came out, I reset the Ipod.

And it works perfectly. Fixed with a Post-it.

I am an Ipod mechanic.