Nov 13 - Two Days Time-Travel

Sunday did not get any better. Yesterday's issue with the GameCube Portable project was still staring us in the face (no Shoemaker's Elves appeared overnight to fix our problems). So I did what I always do when I'm trying to ignore a difficult problem, I looked for easier problems to solve. Freud might suggest this approach gives me an artificial sense of accomplishment while I avoid the real issues in my life. And he'd be right.

But what Freud doesn't understand is that avoiding the GameCube Portable problems means that a squeaky light-switch is no longer annoying the laundry room, cold air is no longer blowing under the front door, and the lights in the upstairs bathroom are no longer humming. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, right Sigmund?

But it wasn't all about shirking on a Sunday. I did try to fix the GameCube's offending potentiometer thingamajig. While I got it working a little better, it was definitely not going to do the job. So on my trip to Lowes for weatherstripping and light-switches, I stopped in at EB Games on the off chance they might have some old GameCube controllers gathering dust with the rest of Nintendo's current product line.

Luckily, they had a couple of cheap-ass third-party controllers on the shelf. Not really knowing if these knockoffs would have the right kind of parts, I bought one anyways. The clerk behind the cash register was only mildly interested in the fact that I needed the controller for parts. While he thought the GameCube Portable project sounded cool, there was no huzzah from the surprisingly large Sunday-shopping crowd in the store. This disappointed my Ego.

At home, we ripped open the controller and found that we got lucky - the controller had the exact type of potentiometer we needed. From there it was simply an exercise in being very, very careful in rebuilding the broken trigger. Once the solder and glue was dry, we tested everything with the help of our buddy Link.

Success!

And after two days of worrying and rebuilding, we were back to where we thought we were two days ago.