Saturday night, I dropped my IBM X30 laptop onto the concrete outside of Bambino's (quality ingredients + (inattentive staff or uneven oven) = good pizza slightly burnt). When I booted it next, the backlight was out (only a ghost image displayed). Frick.

The IBM hardware guide for the X30 (FRU doc) walked me through the required LCD cable unplug and reseating that was required to get the backlight working. About 30 bolts needed to come out to check the inverter cabling and the LCD cabling, so a piece of paper and pen were necessary for me to keep track of all their locations (screen bezel, keyboard, keyboard bezel, LCD connection). Interestingly, this was all accomplishable with a Leatherman (Ryan conjectured this was an IBM design requirement ;). 1.5 hours later, I had a working laptop again.

Big thanks to Ryan for helping out with emergency laptop and network access.