Gerbings Rant and Nexus Repair

I had the opportunity to break out my iFixit tool kit this afternoon. The replacement microphone/usb circuit board for the older Nexus 4 arrived from somewhere in China (ordered off of Amazon). After cracking the case open (2 screws), removing the plastic motherboard cover (9 screws), speakers (2 screws) and the battery (2 screws), I was able to pry out the tiny circuit board. Pry as in components were taped into the case. Then reassemble and test. A whole lot more screws than the iPhone 4 I took apart earlier. (2 screws)

It worked like a charm and it looked like there was one small "fried" component after it's trip through the washing machine by someone who shall remain nameless. Total cost for the repair was $6.98 with free shipping. Plus I got to play with my toolkit and now have a spare, unlocked GSM phone.

On Tuesday morning, there was up a foot of fresh snow on some of the roads. The main roads were mostly clear as long as you didn't need to change lanes. The Ural had no problem though it was running really rich by the time I arrived home yesterday afternoon. I suspect the air filter was soaked from all of the fresh snow getting sucked into the air cleaner. This rig really needs some sort of snorkel to keep snow out of the air filter. Maybe I just need to cover the rig when it is sitting at the University to keep snow from building up.

After a week of longer rides, the bottom started to drop and winter was threatening to return. From +15°F on Thursday morning to -11°F by the end of the day. It was time for the light fleece over the Gerbings liner.

Speaking of Gerbings, I had sent in my liner and gloves in to Gerbings for repair and specifically mentioned the left glove not working right (higher resistance which suggests that one circuit had a broken wire). They repaired the broken wire in the heating circuit of the glove and it worked maybe once. Then the wire broke at the fragile connector (I had mentioned that as well) Rather than deal with them again, I just cut off the broken connector and replaced it with a part from Radio Shack and now it works fine. I should've just fixed it myself in the first place as they didn't even test their work.