Hit 500 motherboard repairs last week and it caught me off guard

I was going through my old repair logs to clear out space on my hard drive and noticed the number 500 pop up on my counter spreadsheet. I started this little side thing fixing dead motherboards for locals about 3 years ago, mostly just as a way to make extra cash between moving jobs. Didnt think I'd ever get past maybe a hundred boards. But last week I logged an old HP board with a bad VRM and that was number 500. It hit me kind of weird because I never set out to hit some big milestone, I just kept taking in boards people were gonna trash. What was your number that made you surprised youd done that much work? I'm curious what everyone else tracks if they track anything at all.

2 comments

2 Comments

the_nina23d ago

And that's exactly what I did with my old pickup truck too. I was just changing the oil one Saturday and glanced at the odometer and it was sitting right at 200,000 miles. I had no idea it was coming up, I'd been driving that thing for years just back and forth to work and the store. It's funny how those numbers sneak up on you when you're not trying to make them happen. I've got a buddy who keeps a tally of every lawnmower he's fixed and he says the same thing, the big numbers just creep up on you while you're busy doing the work.

barbara_kim23d ago

Oh hey, that's a cool milestone! But I think you might be off by one though - you said you logged an HP board last week and that was number 500, but if you were counting from the start and that was the last one you logged, then you actually hit 500 when you entered that board, not before it. So the surprise moment would have been when you typed it in, not later. Kinda like when you check your odometer and it flips to a round number without you noticing until after. I track mine in a notebook (old school, I know) and I remember getting to 100 felt way bigger than 500 did for some reason.