Got a cheap cordless phone from Fry’s the other day. I discovered it didn’t have a switch to turn off the ringer so I opened it up and de-soldered and removed the ringer. I put the phone back together, let it charge overnight, but found much to my annoyance that it wouldn’t work—the status LED kept blinking indicating a low-battery condition.

So last night I was bemusedly considering it… And I figured that since it was going to go in the trash if it was broken (at $20 it wasn’t even worth my time to re-solder the the ringer and return it), nothing I could do to it would make it worse. So I picked it up and quickly slammed it a few times against my desk.

Much to my amazement, it started working perfectly. So apparently, sometimes the answer really is just to pound on it a bit.