My daughter loves to type away on this old typewriter she was given a few years ago. It’s always been special to hear the thack and clunk, the bell from her room when she was working on “her novel”.

This week she came to me, asking if I could take a look at it because the carriage was stuck. It only moved about 2cm in the middle allowing for very narrow pages only.

You shouldn’t take a typewriter apart lightly.

It’s a lesson that I learned when I tried to fix the bell alarm clock my brother had, many years ago. Taking it apart is rather easy and enjoyable. You might even be able to spot the defect, but putting it all back together is another story. I kept the box with alarm clock springs and cogs for a long time, believing I would succeed one time.

So I put to practice my debugging skills from the software world. Inspecting and observing, iterating. I brought in an endoscope and a vacuum and after 30min pressing buttons and levers I spotted a hook and bracket connection that were unhooked.

It’s so satisfying to see something work again, especially something of this complexity. Of course I validated both bug and fix by unhooking again, reproducing the issue, hooking them up again and see everything working again.

Now don’t drop it again, girl.