I’m going to reveal some extraordinary numbers and facts for which even we weren’t aware of until we started preparing this post. Sounds crazy I know, but it’s true

Time Spent

We haven’t tracked our working hours, but our estimation says more than 5.700 hours so far, or approximately:

• 2.100 hours – design (Interface & UX, Mock-ups, Graphics)
• 1.500 hours – development
• 1.100 hours – copywriting
• 1.000 hours – testing

Longest & Shortest Times

• Longest time spent in the office – 19 hours
• Longest time spent working from remote locations – 6 months
• Longest time spent on crafting a simple sentence – 165 min
• Longest time spent on staring at a same interface with no idea what to do next – 18 hours
• Longest average time for customer support – 4 hours
• Longest server downtime – 40 minutes
• Shortest time spent on developing a killer feature – 16 hours
• Shortest time spent on writing a blog post – 20 minutes
• Shortest time spent on testing a new feature – 6 hours
• Shortest average time for customer support – 15 minutes

Best. Worst. Hardest. Easiest.

• Best decision ever made – The story behind our brand, the attitude, the mascot, the name
• Worst decision ever made – Not taking too much risks from the very beginning
• Hardest thing to do – Beat the blank state
• Easiest thing to do – Mess the read-write permissions of the blog folder

Source Code

For the codebase we are using SVN source control versioning system hosted on Assembla, and to date we count totals of 671 code commits;

We’ve written about 52.243 lines of code from which:

• 21.067 lines C# code
• 12.717 lines JavaScript
• 5.830 lines CSS
• 12.169 lines HTML and
• 460 lines in configuration files

All time system errors count – 130

Guys that Keep our Back Safe

These are few amazing services we cannot live without:

• Rackspace – hosting
• Sendgrid – sending transactional emails
• MailChimp – email newsletters, announcements and promotions
• Basecamp – collaboration, ideas sharing and bug tracking
• Intercom – customer engagement and communication
• Skrill – processing online payments
• Dropbox – file sharing
• NewRelic – server monitoring and analysis
• WordPress – our blog
• Google Apps for Business – Email, Docs, Analytics, Feedburner

Miscellaneous

• We’ve changed 2 different Cities and 3 Offices
• We’ve eaten about 30 jars of pickles and 56 super delicious “pizzas vegetarianas”.
• We’ve drunk up 1200 liters of water. No coffee at all yet.

Top photo credit: Kevin Dooley

Author information

Dimitar Stojanov

Co-founder at Invoicebus

Dimitar is co-founder of Invoicebus, an online invoicing tool for easy invoice management. He's passionate about creating beautiful and simple web applications and occasionally writes on this blog about web design, online business, and fighting the status-quo. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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The extensive everyday usage of laptops tempts us to play with unconventional maintenance methods sometimes. From sloppy water pouring to hairdryer drying, from overheating to deep freezer cooling, from sticky keyboard spilled with Coca-Cola to complete bathtub washing. In fact, every described incident has happened to one single laptop – the protagonist. However, the most recent one occurred last week when we baked its motherboard in the oven at 200°C. And yes, the oven is those same one where we make pizza.

Pain in the Neck

After 4 years of usage, our protagonist stopped working as a result of the graphical chip failure. The symptoms manifested some strange vertical red lines across the screen with distorted graphics during boot-time, preventing the OS to start. After we had contacted manufacturer support, we were advised to return the laptop back to factory because of a well-known problem. However, we didn’t have much time to send it back due to complicated shipping procedures, so we put another two options on plate:

• to buy a new laptop,
• to try fix the old one by our own

We gave priority to the second option because DIY excitement was much bigger than the risk. The laptop was almost dead, so we didn’t mind experimenting a bit.

Actual Problem

The graphical chip have dozens of solder connection points to the motherboard, all it takes is one hairline crack to cause malfunction of the chip. Many times in newer laptops, the heat generated causes the solder to get close to its melting point causing these hairline cracks, also known as micro fractures in the solder joints. With a little knowledge in physics and a short research, we found very interesting method to fix these sensitive micro fragments. The method is called "reflow" where the chip on the motherboard is heated under Highly Regulated circumstances for a pre-determined amount of time at a critical temperature. The objective is to "reflow" the solder from the chip to the board via BGA (Ball Grid Array) points on the chip. The question is how to heat the joints to that temperature?
Actually, there are few methods, some of them are sophisticated, some of them are plain, however the simplest and most fun is the "motherboard for lunch" method (as we call it), that requires literally baking the motherboard in the oven. Are we kidding? – NO!

The Recipe

Below are given the exact steps of how we cooked the motherboard. We took a few shots as a memo though.

• Carefully disassembled all laptop components, connectors, cables
• Removed the motherboard

• Removed all parts from it: CPU, Bluetooth modules, CMOS battery, plastic parts and caps
• Cleaned up the CPU and GPU from the thermal paste residues

• Turned on the oven to pre-heat at 200°C (392°F)
• Made 4 improvised aluminum ball legs to hold the motherboard lifted

• Foiled up the baking tray, with aluminium cooking foil
• Put the motherboard in the tray

It’s cooking time!

• The baking took exactly 7 minutes and 45 seconds. After the 6th minute, we felt heavy smell of solder. It was a good sign, something was melting
• Left the motherboard to cool down slowly for approximate 30min
• Reapplied new thermal paste
• Reassembled all other components
• Pushed the power button

The Taste

It smelled like Sheldon’s Bazinga, but actually was Eureka!
The laptop was fully functional with no sign of the issue at all. We are smiling while writing this blog post on that same machine and probably going to smile again and again every time we retell this story. Almost forgot – this was the second successful baking, after one which happened 12 months ago! How long it will last I don’t know, but it seems this laptop wants to be cooked. After all it doesn’t cost a thing, only 8 minutes in the oven, right?

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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