To all of the backyard grillers out there:

I can smell the charcoal firing up as we speak!

I want to talk a little about a simple outdoor roaster that I am growing to love and use a lot…it’s called a La Caja China Box. Here’s mine:

The La Caja China Story

It was the year 1985 during the Christmas season, when Roberto Guerra was cooking a pig on a makeshift barbecue, talking about all the trouble and long waiting time involved in this process. His father then talked about the long, wooden box he remembered from his childhood in Cuba.

His father told him how the old contraption, called the Chinese Box, cut the roasting times virtually in half. Roberto asked his father to build their very own box.

A few years later, the company, La Caja China, was born.

It’s the stuff legends are made of! Listen, I don’t resell these or get a commission for talking about them, but I’m seeing them more and more available even Home Depot online has them to order.

Last night I got off of work and I brined a whole chicken for a few hours, rinsed it, and put it into my China Box for about 90 minutes. The results were spectacular:

A little roasted chicken, some fennel cole slaw and my world-famous mashed potatoes with a charred lemon and BAM! you have some good eating there. Ok, I had too many potatoes last night, but heck you only live once. I’ll diet AFTER the holidays, right?

OK, there you go, the La Caja China box and anyone can use it. It’s super easy, fun, and different. I like all three of those things.

Happy grilling – I mean “roasting”.

Ryan

The art of airflow.

Good afternoon again friends, I’m getting a lot of blogging done today that has been built up on my “to do” list for a few weeks. I’m sorry that I’m hitting you all at once, but I found some time to get my typing done today.

Recently, I was working on a 13″ MacBook Pro (Unibody) that was sent into us damaged. Of course we can repair this; however in this particular case the customer asked us NOT repair fix the “cosmetic” damage and just work on the electronics.

Here’s what I found out about this unit. As Forrest Gump might have put it, “Fluids is as fluids does.” Thinking of liquids helps us understand how air flows. For all general purposes, air flows just like water. Flow will inevitably follow the path of least resistance. That means the flow will usually take the shortest, unrestricted path from the point of high pressure to the low pressure area.

Take this “cosmetic damage” for instance. Yes, we can repair this unit and leave the “dents” in the side of the unit. However when I tested it, the fans that cool the logic board were turning on pre-maturely. Most of the air was being pushed out of this “cosmetic” hole in the side of the computer, rather than through the vents on the back which ensures that the air flows OVER the logic board and CPU to keep it cool, rather than AROUND it.

Why was this unit failing? It’s because the fans were not able to keep the internal components of the computer cool enough to operate under specifications and therefore overheating.

This is just a friendly post to keep in mind that these devices are meant to be “whole” when operated, and that the art of airflow applies to your expensive electronics, there’s no doubt about that.

Take care, Ryan

iPhone 6S Repairs launched…some still coming.

Here at Mission Repair, we’re always trying to keep up with the current models for repairs, and we’re happy to bring the iPhone 6S repairs to our linecard.

However we’re still working on iPhone 6S screen repairs…they are taking some time to get to us in the repair market. Could the news on CNN an hour ago have something to do with it?

From the article:
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“Apple may be in a spot of trouble, at least in the short term, Credit Suisse said Tuesday.

The Swiss bank said in a note the tech giant has cut as much as 10 percent of its component orders. “The cuts seem to be driven by weak demand for the new iPhone 6s, as overall builds are now estimated to be below 80 million units for the December quarter and between 55-60 million units for the March quarter,” the bank said.

Credit Suisse also lowered its iPhone estimates for 2016 to 222 million from 242 million. It estimated a 6 percent year-over-year growth rate in 2017. “We believe such adjustments reflect a more subdued launch around the iPhone 6s/6s Plus in terms of uptake.”
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Well, I do know that if Apple is cutting component orders, this will leave less components (screens!) in the market for the repair sector. While we are now offering a full line of repairs for the iPhone 6S, the screens are stil expensive and a bit scarce. I think we should be good by Christmas time, but ony time will tell. Good luck Apple!

Thanks, Ryan

My iPhone caught on fire.

Good afternoon,

We heard this in our Lenexa store recently – a customer brought in her now dead iPhone 4S and her Apple cable. Look closely at the burn mark on the end and how the plastic has started to melt and warp:

She plugged in the device like she has done for years but this time it was different. It started smoking and almost caught on fire. It’s no secret that electricity can start fires, but I’m sure that my customer didn’t expect to see this happen when it’s worked fine for the hundreds of times before.

The next question was, “why did this happen?”

Well, there are a number of factors that can cause problems with electronics. Water being one of the biggest culprits…electronics are very sensitive to the amount of electricity that each component receives.

When electronics get wet, the water conducts the electricity all over the place and zaps the components with voltages they are not designed to handle. Connections melt or burn.

Basically, it’s like what happens when a ocean wave crashes in on top of a sand castle. It obliterates the subtle design needed to make it function.

Was it water that caused this? Who knows…it could have been dust, or one pin on this cable that was slightly bent, or a myriad of other things. We don’t typically do detailed failure analysis on issues like this unless a customer wants us to do so. Typically, all that is necessary is a new cable and a charging port repair on the iPhone 4S which is exactly what this unit needed.

BTW, it’s safer to start your next camp fire with matches 😉

See you, Ryan

The iPad Air winner has received her prize!

It’s official, if you weren’t part of the festivities last month when we hit 1 million unique visitors right here on the Mission Repair blog…then you didn’t get a chance to win the BRAND NEW iPAD AIR. This was back on October 13, 2015.

Well, we did have a winner, Martha L. and she is from right here in Kansas next to two of our locations!

We received the device from Apple and sent it right out to her after I took a couple of pictures of the new device. It was a lot of fun, Martha was very great about it, and she’s now the proud owner of a Brand New iPad Air compliments of Mission Repair. It’s that simple, and we had a great time. Looking forward to what 2 million visitors brings!

See you later, Ryan