GOING OFF WATCH

Well both of my wristwatches that I've talked about before are now 
broken. My recreation watch, the mechanical self-winding one I 
talked about in 2024-02-17At_One_with_the_ST6_Wristwatch.txt, had 
one of the lugs that holds the watch band break off late last year. 
I've been meaning to attempt some sort of repair using epoxy but 
I'm not very confident. Then yesterday my everyday Casio calculator 
watch, described in 2022-11-06Reviewing_the_Casio_CA-53W.txt, 
finally went blank after a long time getting fainter. Granted 
that's been going for well over ten years on the original battery 
which the manual expects to last less than five.

Opening up the Casio, where the calculator buttons were getting 
stuck with gunk and needed cleaning anyway, it turns out quite 
unlike any other watch I've opened up. The battery is a large 
CR2016 size, and held in a clip-in cradle where it seems impossible 
to unhock the clip from the back. Since I needed to get through to 
the keyboard anyway, I proceeded to pick apart all the clip/snap 
fit components expecting to eventualy find a typical membrane style 
keypad. This I did, except for water resistance the rubber button 
pad is sandwiched in the case plastic with no apparant way to 
separate it. So rather than simply washing it in the sink, I spent 
the evening pushing out each button from behind with a small 
screwdriver as far as it will go and trying to clean out all the 
gunk that was revealed. How much good that does remains to be seen, 
but really I'm less confident about getting all the bits back 
together correctly and undamaged now anyway. I did at least make 
sure to photograph it at every step of disassembly, so I _should_ 
be able to get things back in the order they came out, but how much 
damage is done in the process remains to be seen.

Already it seems I've been beaten by this guy who figured out how 
to release the battery clip without pulling the rest apart first:

https://idoneitmyself.com/2009/06/07/replacing-the-battery-on-your-casio-calculator-watch-and-resetting-the-watch/

Maybe I should have done a Web search and read that first, though I 
probably would have only further convinced myself that the clip was 
at the other end, because clearly that end was completely 
impossible. That's the trouble when I try repairing things, I 
always jump to the completely wrong conclusions. Anyway this time I 
needed it all apart to get at the keypad from behind too.

The timing of the battery going dead is interesting. The day before 
it was in the bottom of my bag at the beach, under everything else 
I wear. I've noticed before that its display is dim when I put it 
back on when leaving. Was a button getting pressed by the other 
stuff on top, wearing the battery down? or was the salt in the air 
somehow causing increased discharge? Either way maybe I should 
leave it in the car in the future, since I do have the clock on my 
fire brigade pager as well.

I looked through my collection of other watches, but they're all 
either broken mechanical ones or more dead battery victims. I don't 
have spare batteries for the latter, and this experience with 
fixing a digital watch has dampened my already-weak confidence to 
tackle repairing its clockwork ancestors.

Hopefully I'll be going near a place that sells obscure batteries 
on the weekend, but until then (at least) I'm adrift without a 
timepiece (or calculator). Well actually I take it off when I'm not 
wearing clothes anyway, which has been most of the time in these 
recent hot days, but somehow it's still strange being without it 
entirely.

Oh, and on a completely different topic: DEATH TO ALL MOSQUITOES! 
DIE DIE DIE DIE!!!!!

Somehow they've discovered a new way into my bedroom which I 
thought I'd successfully mozzie-proofed years ago, and keep me 
jumping around slapping the walls like a mad man on these warm 
nights. Why is no problem ever truely solved?! Maybe I'll have to 
get a net for the bed.

 - The Free Thinker