Archives for September 2012

Wicked Edge Sharpening System Preview

2012/09/24 By staze

I am not a knife nut. But, I do like nice things. My kitchen knives are KAI Shun’s, and they’re very nice, and pretty expensive to boot. And after 5 years of use, they finally needed sharpening. Unfortunately, from the time I bought them until now, Kershaw no longer offers free sharpening for life. They have instead outsourced the sharpening to a company called Perfect Edge in the Bay Area of California. So, I bit the bullet, and sent off my entire knife set via FedEx, and waited. About 5 days later (3 business days I think), I got a call they were done, and that the charge was about $40 with shipping back. Part of the reason it was that high was they had to “restore” a knife because the tip had chipped off ages ago. Fine. So, I pay them, and they ship them back.

Later that week, I got them back, and yay verily, they are indeed sharp. But not crazy sharp. I can’t shave arm hair with them, but they do cut paper a heck of a lot better than they used to. But the “repair” they did on the one knife seemed a bit extreme, and I wish they would have asked before doing it. But, it still works, and it’s sharp.

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Repairing a Samsung SyncMaster 225BW

2012/09/24 By staze

Another department on campus sent out a note to the IT crowd complaining about 6 of their Samsung 255BW’s going out within a year. After some brief searching, it seems like this is a common problem with, you guessed it, bad capacitors. Being the fun loving tinkerer that I am, I offered my services to replace them.

A few days later, one of the bad ones showed up, and I was able to pull it apart and find, yes indeed, two of the caps had bulged to the point of leaking (as you can see from the title image, in the lower left corner).

With some searching on the badcaps forums I found the replacement caps that seemed the most reasonable in cost were some United Chemi-Con ones. The page for this monitor on badcaps is here. Much like most of the people on the thread, the two failed caps for me were the 820uF. All the stock caps were CapXon (which apparently has a reputation for this type of issue… at least during the time these were manufactured).

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Hazard 4 Kato Mini-Messenger Bag Experience

2012/09/10 By staze

I have had my Kato Mini-Messenger Bag now for over a month, and I think I can now write a review on how I actually like the bag.

The short version is, I love it. It’s a great bag. Well made (save one sloppy stitch that I already fixed), comfortable, and it holds a ton. And that, really, is the only problem. I’ll explain.

The bag has two main pockets on the outside surface. The front pocket on the flap, and a back padded pocket for an iPad-sized tablet. I store my Nook in the front pocket, and nothing in the back. Open the flap, and you have a pocket on the back of the flap (closed by a small velcro patch), then you have some MOLLE loops, and the map pocket area. In there, there’s pocket for a map, then some small pen-sized pockets, and another area closed by velcro that’s about the same size as the front pocket. Then the main area for CCW, or a Macbook Air, etc. I don’t currently use that space either. But that’s the thing, I don’t NEED to, yet. The bag has SO much storage and SO many pockets, I keep adding things, and forgetting they’re in there until I realize the bag has gotten overly heavy, and remove them to save weight. Is this a problem? No… most people (myself included), want storage space. It’s just a bit weird to have so many pockets that you forget what you’ve put in them.

So right now, I’ve got a Nook, Prius Fob, Leatherman XTi, CRKT Eat’n Tool, CRKT Van-hoy On Fire, 25′ of Paracord, 100′ of 25lb Mono-filament, Fenix RD20, Maglite XL200, Couple Pens, Lockpick set, 5×7″ Grit-it with an iPhone sync cable, MicroUSB cable, iPhone Charger, Nintendo DSlite USB charge cable, and two small bottles of Excedrin and Naproxen Sodium. The whole bag probably weighs about 7lbs. It’s not very heavy at all. At some point I’ll get a Macbook Air and add that to the bag, which will obviously add a couple pounds, but still a VERY good EDC bag.

The other minor annoyance is the use of Velcro/Hook-and-loop for closure. I hate the stuff. Noisy, wears out, etc. So, I took a couple pieces of hook field I had, and covered the loop side. So, they don’t “close”, but to me, that’s fine.

All and all, very happy. And extremely pleased with the service provided by the supplier Tactical Distributors. If you’re looking for a good EDC bag, and like the vertical style bags rather than a more traditional messenger style, I’d highly recommend it. Heck, judging by their designs, anything from Hazard4/Civilian Labs look great!

[xrr rating=4.75/5]