Broken DVD Player

A few months ago my DVD player broke. I could put in a DVD but it wouldn't even recognize that there was something in there. I found some greasy guy with a shop on the side of the road and he charged me $20 to clean it out.

Tonight it broke again, only this time I didn't feel like paying another $20 for the guy to clean it out. I only paid $40 for it in the first place and I just can't bring myself to spend $40 for 'maintenance and repairs' when it's only worth that much, for goodness sake! So I decided to do it myself. Can't be that hard, right?

I pulled out all the screws, took off the cover and found all kinds of dust in there. I blew it out but found yet another cover over the lens. Last time greasy guy said the lens was the problem so I figured I needed to get to it.

Then came the 'warning, danger of radiation' sign. So I asked my roommate 'How should I feel about radiation?' And she says 'I've heard you should avoid it.' And I say 'well there can't be that much in here, what about those Chinese kids that get like 30 cents a day to sit and put these things together?'

I went about pulling off the metal plate, blew it out, put it back on, tried it out and it seemed to work except for that there was no picture, only sound. I'm ashamed to say that, while it took me only 15 minutes to fix the DVD player for the first time in my life, it took me 15 more to figure out that the reason why there was no picture was because the yellow/white/red cord was in the wrong place.

So I might not be quite as technologically inclined as I would like to believe but 2 years in the Sandbox have proven that I can fix a lot of random and weird things by myself!!