Tech Talk is a series highlighting a member of the Gophermods Family. We presented each of our technicians, managers and employees with 10 questions. These are their answers. Our 2nd Tech Talk Participant is our owner and founder; Casey P.
- Where are you from?
I am originally from Franklin Park, IL but I was raised in South Eastern Wisconsin in Brighton, WI.
- What is your Job at Gophermods?
I am not sure I would classify what I do as a job at Gophermods, because everything I do is so much fun and I enjoy everyone I interact with throughout my day. I oversee the day to day operations of the Gophermods stores and focusing on building a cohesive team, so I would say my official title is “President’ but I would like to think I’m the “Coach.”
- What is your favorite phone to repair and why?
The original HTC One M7, because it was such a challenge to repair it made it so much fun. I recall for the longest time, we were the only repair facility around that would even repair the device and to this day, I think we’re only one of a few that still repair the HTC One M7.
- What is the biggest repair challenge you’ve faced?
Reballing the original PlayStation 3 RSX GPU processor. It was a huge challenge and we had so many requests for the repair. I would spend countless summer nights in 2012 figuring out that repair and it would take about 3-5 hours per repair. If you made a mistake, you had to start all over and a single repair could take 6-10 hours. Ultimately, we were able to figure out the repair but after all the testing, we realized that the reball service wasn’t as good as everyone was hoping.
- What motivated you to be a part of Gophermods?
It originally started out as a way to cheat on Call of Duty 3 and Halo, but that passion obviously changed.
- What is your favorite piece of technology that you own?
Recently it would be our DJI Osmo, I love it, but over the past few years it has been my Lenovo Yoga Pro 2, it is a solid laptop with a lot of computing power. It hasn’t let me down yet, goes with me everywhere and it is a tank that has survived many falls. I am more excited for the DJI Osmo and its capabilities and features we can use it for at the stores.
- What is your current phone?
A Samsung Galaxy Note IV.
- What do you like about your phone?
Battery life and the large screen makes multitasking and a long work day a lot easier knowing that I don’t have to plug in my phone multiple times throughout the day like I had to when I was an iPhone user.
- After repairing a wide variety of phones, is there one you would consider switching from your current one for?
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. It is superfast, one of the sexiest phones currently available, great features and the battery life is superb.
- What is the most bizarre or unusual repair you have ever encountered?
Too many for me to write about, after repairing devices for close to seven years, I have seen my fair share of head scratchers. I would say that the most memorial repair was way back when the iPhone 4 was first released. I remember that October, within a month of the device being released, we had a U of M student from Germany stop in the store to get it repaired, and he also brought us a complete color conversion kit to change the iPhone 4 from black to white. This was a huge deal because Apple did not have any White iPhone 3G, 3Gs or iPhone 4 available yet and it was also such a new device the entire shop was nerding out and very excited!