the tech at long & mcquade's is gone for two weeks, and he charges by the minute, so i'm going to open the thing up and take a good look at it. i'm thinking that if it's close enough to the diagram i'll get a soldering iron and give it a go. otherwise, what i want to do is probably to strip it before i go in, which is going to require a soldering iron either way. that way, he's not charging me for disassembling it....

i picked up the blu-ray drive, though. it's going to need to wait until tomorrow for an install. right now, my feet are killing me. that was a good twenty-five km on foot today...