Surgery
My laptop has been having power problems. Again. In the past, power problems have caused the plug (the one on the end of the AC adapter which plugs into the back of the laptop) to become very hot, causing the plastic part of it to melt. This has some bad effects: (1) it coats part of the electrical contact area with molten plastic, and (2) the plastic sometimes solidifies in a shape which prevents the plug from being removed without considerable force.
I bought a new AC adapter recently, but the laptop was still having serious power issues. In this case, I suspected the problem was just poor electrical contact (stemming from the previous traumas the laptop has suffered). I cleaned off the power port contacts using acetate to dissolve any plastic coating the area: still no improvement. There was some visible damage to the power port resulting from (2), so I opened the patient up to conduct an exploratory surgery. Yes, that’s the motherboard in the photo. And, no, it was not easy to take out.
It turns out that yanking a power plug out of a laptop using pliers can do bad things (not that I had much choice at the time, since it was melted in place). The ohmmeter pinpointed where my yanking had partially broken the circuit. I proceeded to solder up the break. I had never before picked up a soldering iron, so I was fairly terrified that I might destroy my computer. However, the ohmmeter confirmed that my soldering patched the circuit, and the laptop did boot when I turned it on.
At this point, it appears that the patient will make a full recovery. 
Update, May 27:
The patient appeared to be in good condition for a day and a half post-op. However, the normal (small) stresses associated with connecting/disconnecting the power plug broke my soldering repairs. I had to operate again. I just finished this second surgery. The power system is functioning properly for the moment; we’ll see if my repairs hold up. Unfortunately, the patient picked up a scar this time around: I had to cut through some plastic to extract a stripped screw.
Update, May 30:
The patient’s previous symptoms reemerged yesterday, and I spent all of this morning in a third round of surgery. Upon closer inspection, I determined that I had failed to remove the plastic coating from the power port contacts. It turns out that I was mistaken in my choice of solvents: acetate does not dissolve the plastic which melted onto the power port. The power port is a very small recessed area which is difficult to see into and difficult to illuminate. This time around, I pulled it off of the motherboard entirely, to better see and manipulated it. I disassembled it as far as possible, and then thoroughly scrapped the contacts. Reassembled it, soldered it back onto the motherboard, and put the laptop back together. I’m still fairly inept at soldering, so this all took a rather long time. However, the computer seems to be working properly now.
[...] lack of blog activity owes partly to school, and partly to the fact the my laptop finally died (it had been on its last legs for a while). I replaced it with a desktop box from Dell; desktops are a lot cheaper, especially in [...]