LCD monitor repair
Last weekend a friend gave me a 20" LCD monitor, saying simply that it didn't work, but that I could have it.
That evening I disassembled it and discovered that it had five blown capacitors. No problem! I ordered the replacement capacitors from digikey.com, and tonight I soldered them in. The monitor works like champ, now! Sadly, this means that I'm finally saying goodbye to my old 19" CRT, the amazing Sony CPD-G410R. It's served me faithfully (and bowed my desk) for almost a decade now.
Side note: there's a bizarre anomaly I wasn't able to identify: a bright patch of yellow in the upper-left corner that is literally sitting on top of, or behind, the display. There's obvious parallax with this thing, and it's "cut" at a perfect right angle. Online forums claim it's tape, but after disassembling five layers into the monitor, I decided to cut my losses lest I damage it through incompetence. One of these days maybe I'll get up the gumption to dismantle it enough to fix it.