My beloved Aeron chair in my home office went entirely flat. It went down to it’s lowest level and wouldn’t life up anymore. This made it a bit challenging to work on my computers as I was looking up at the monitors. This defeated the whole idea of an ergonomic chair. So I started to look for a way to fix the lift.

After a LOT of searching, I called a place called Home Office Solutions in Chicago that had a replacement kit for $95 delivered. Although this is the price of a replacement chair at Staples, I figured that the Aeron was well worth the repair. I just wasn’t sure if that was a good price.

The guy at the other end of the line told me that this kit included not only the 2 stage lift (that’s what my chair had), but also two (2) tools. One was a lift off tool for the base of the chair where the wheels attach and the other separated the lift from the tilt mechanism at the seating area. After a few more questions and being assured that with these tools I could do it myself in 5 minutes, I went for it.

Today (Saturday) the parts arrived just as the sales representative said it would. It took 4 days from Chicago, IL. to northern California. I took out the kit and looked and the parts, did a quick read of the instructions, and went to the garage to fix my chair.

So here is what I learned. It took more than 5 minutes, but only about 15 so that wasn’t so bad. The tool to get the base with the wheels separated from the hydraulic lift wasn’t really needed. You could of just as easily used a rubber mallet and just hit the base of the lift. Since the entire lift replacement was being replaced anyway, it didnt matter if it was totally messed up. The trickest part was supporting the legs so that when you hit the lift mechanism, the forces would actually lift the legs off the lift. It’s in there with a friction fit, but it’s wicked tight. All the wheels popped out before the base separated from the lift.

The other liftoff tool on the other hand, was well worth it! This tool straps around the part of the lift that is pressed into the seat area by the tiliting mechanism of the chair. You strap it on with a rubber band (actually it was an o-ring) then you hit it a few times real hard with a hammer. It popped right out.

Reassembly was a breeze. Everything was friction fit. Basically you put the replacement lift back in the chair tilt area and then put the base with the legs back on. I had to put the wheels back in since they had popped out with all the whacking. After that, you turn the chair over and then sit in it. That’s it. Overall this was really easy. The only tricky part was supporting the base of the chair with the legs as I hit the bottom of the lift with the rubber mallet. It may have been nice to have someone help for that part.

Now, I am back in seating heaven with my Aeron Chair. If your lift breaks, just fix it all yourself. It’s not hard if you are handy. You’ll need a rubber mallet and a hammer that’s about it. Actually you could use just the hammer. It’ll just mess up the bottom of the old lift, but that’s ok.

Today I changed the front rotors (and brake pads) of my wife’s Volvo. I do a lot of work on the cars that I have owned and occasionally I stop and marvel at how well made something is.

It first happened when I adjusted the belt tension of my 1989 Nissan Maxima. You see I was used to American cars. My first one was a 1970 Mustang Mach 1. To adjust the belt tension you had to pull on the tension pulley real hard and then tighten the bolt securing the tension pulley. After that you would push on the belt to make sure it wasn’t too tight or loose. It was so stone age. The Maxima had a bolt you turned that would lift or drop the tensioner pulley. It was so easy to be accurate and it also stayed at the right tension for a long time.

The second time I was struck by this was when I was working on the engine bay on my Ferrari and I noticed a highly polished fragile piece of metal that basically connected some part to the engine. It looked like a piece or art. I was amazed that they took so much time to highly finish such a small part. It was circular at both ends and had a nice thin rod in between. It was a polished stainless steel!

Then today I looked at the rotor of my wife’s Volvo. These were made by a German company called Zimmerman. The rotors were Zinc impregnated to prevent rust and they are vented. As I picked up this part and inspected it, I was once again struck by how nicely finished it was. This part will be abused liked crazy on the car. Semi-Metallic pads will rub against it at high temperatures and all kinds of road dirt and grim will pass through it. The disc will be ugly and worn in a few years and you’ll only have a fleeting glimpse of how it once was. Still the manufacturer took the time to make it look great. I many have to but another pair for the rear of the car.

So here it is in all it’s glory. For the love of fine forged metal.

So today I was able to successfully upgrade my laptop computer to Windows 7. It was mostly good, but it was frustrating in a few ways. Props to Sony for updating their website to cover Windows 7 support!

However, they provided a link to Windows 7 drivers that had no content! There was a nice large droplist with all the versions of Windows 7. This was exciting at first because I thought I would be able to upgrade without issue.

But then I clicked on the links, got all ready to download the drivers and then I got this long list:

OK guys at Sony, what’s up with this? I went through the process of choosing every version of Windows 7 only to see the message that nothing is available. Why even bother to put all this up there if nothing is available! That’s insane.

I decided to proceed anyway. Here’s how it went.

• 12:15p Uninstalled incompatible programs, DeActivate iTunes
• 01:27p The Upgrade begins
• 01:44p Copying of files completed
• 02:15p Gathering Settings, files, and programs (more than 500K files!)
• 02:22p Reboot, then Expanding (2,224 MB)
• 03:01p Transferring fils, settings an program (552,396) 42% complete
• 03:43p Starting Windows again (72% complete)
• 04:02p Preparing for first use
• 04:03p Enter the Product Key
• 04:10 Done – first Windows desktop appears.

So after almost 4 hours, I was in Windows 7. I don’t know why mine took so long. I had read that most people completed it in 1-2 hour. Before I went through the pain of installing all my drivers for my Vaio laptop, I thought I would just explore a little.

Here I discovered a most pleasant surprise. Everything worked! All my special keys, peripherals, everything! I tried my various programs and they were all happy. Even my wifi was fine and I didn’t have to reinsall the Intel ProSet Wireless software that Sony has warned me about.

So there was a happy ending. After being somewhat annoyed by the lack of drivers and the reports of things that wouldn’t work, it all worked! I can only assume that the team at Microsoft went to great lengths to be sure that my upgrade from Vista 32 Business to Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit went as smooth as possible. Great job!

Now you boys at Sony need to improve the experience a bit….

OK, in my continuing effort to save myself from spending unnecessary bucks, I decided to tear into the doors of my Lexus and see what was up with the speakers. The left side of the Nakamichi car stereo stopped making any sound at all. The dealer wanted to replace the entire speaker enclosure for $320 each. Hmmm, I heard in ClubLexus.com that the speakers appear to die on these cars.

The speakers in the door are only 4.5″ in size. The Lexus has component speakers so the tweeter, sub, and mids are all separate components. I saw some Pioneer 4.5″ for $40. I thought I’d give it shot. I had to cut the mounting holes as the new speaker mounts were slightly smaller than the originals.

After about 1 hour, I have a perfectly working system again! Ah, it feels good when time spent works out well.

I have 7 PCs in my house a one Mac. I also have 3 printers in the house – a laser, a color laser, and a photo printer. In the past, I would hook all the printers up to one computer in the network and then share the printer so that the other computers could print to it. This seemed to work well, but I had to leave the computer with the printer attached to it ON all the time so that others could print.

Recently, this “main” computer had a harddrive fail. As I was tinkering with it and rebuilding the system, no one could print! Yes, I could have manually plugged the printer to the machine trying to print and then installed the drivers, etc. etc., but what a huge hassle. What I needed was a way for the printers to stand on their own. This is when I came across this little gem.

The Linksys PSUS4 has a print server for a USB printer, but it also has a 4 port switch. This is a very unusual combination. With the extra ports, I can plug in my networked printers and they hang a few cat 5′s off of it for a direct connection to laptops of visitors, etc. I installed this in about 10 minutes and with almost no setup i was ready to go.

It’s been about 3 weeks now and this unit has performed flawlessly. I have put the former “main” computer into a powersave mode now so that it shuts down if no one is using it after a few hours. In the past, that meant no one could print. No worries now!

You see, main computer is a pretty hairy setup. It’s got a large power suppy and a wicked GTX graphics card. It is under my desk and I can feel the heat coming up off of the computer. I am very happy now that I have this little print server. Highly recommended for a shared printer setup.