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plague journaling
May. 25th, 2020 03:34 pmIn a lot of ways, the pandemic has intensified my usual sentiment of "this might as well happen." I helplessly surrender to the general foolishness and meanness of the universe and people. I assume I will need to just endure things. However! The pandemic has possibly also burned out that part of my brain, because now I am on a righteous crusade to make things marginally less awful for myself.
Case in point: I just spent almost $400 on a new office chair. My current office chair has been with me since, oh, probably sometime mid-00s. It irregularly but frequently collapses down to its minimum height. Sometimes it does this all in one sudden drop. Sometimes it does it a half inch at a time, jolting me downward with little hissing sounds. Two of the casters broke, got replaced, and broke again. So it has to be hauled bodily into position whenever I want to move. It has been in this state of disrepair for years. I spend a lot of time at my computer, and this chair basically functions as a mental and physical torture device.
But on the other hand, I already own it, you know? And new things cost money. Or so I have been telling myself. No more. New chair.
Likewise, this weekend I finally got fed up with the crackling, popping noise produced by my speakers. I thought this was probably due to the mice who once took up residence in the subwoofer (because of course they did); I had determined it wasn't a problem with any of the individual surround speakers. Again, this has been a problem for years. When recording audio, I just plugged in headphones to save my background track purity, circumventing what I assumed was a frayed wire somewhere in the guts of the thing.
This weekend, it was like a goddamn popcorn maker had been set up at my feet. I was either going to solve the problem (find and repair or eliminate the short) or Solve the Problem (launch the whole speaker system into the sun and make use of headphones at all times). I determined the issue was with the little volume control cable, the removal of which irrationally made the whole system go silent. I couldn't see anything wrong with the prongs in the plug, even though this was obviously the sound of something making contact where it shouldn't. In desperation, I used the canned air on the port.
Blessed silence. Best I can figure, there had been a stray hair caught in the port, crossing prongs that should not, for years. YEARS. I have taken the whole thing apart multiple times, but never succeeded in dislodging this bit of dog fur or whatever. I just endured this incessant popping noise because what else was I supposed to do--replace the offending object? Who do you take me for?
I am the embodiment of the failure to observe the phrase, "it's better to light a candle than curse the dark." I'm over here navigating by touch rather than investigate the merest possibility of a light switch, grumbling all the while about how bleeding hard it is to read in this room.
It's a wonder I survived to adulthood. But never mind that. This has been the weekend of losing my patience with shit and just letting myself have nice things.
Case in point: I just spent almost $400 on a new office chair. My current office chair has been with me since, oh, probably sometime mid-00s. It irregularly but frequently collapses down to its minimum height. Sometimes it does this all in one sudden drop. Sometimes it does it a half inch at a time, jolting me downward with little hissing sounds. Two of the casters broke, got replaced, and broke again. So it has to be hauled bodily into position whenever I want to move. It has been in this state of disrepair for years. I spend a lot of time at my computer, and this chair basically functions as a mental and physical torture device.
But on the other hand, I already own it, you know? And new things cost money. Or so I have been telling myself. No more. New chair.
Likewise, this weekend I finally got fed up with the crackling, popping noise produced by my speakers. I thought this was probably due to the mice who once took up residence in the subwoofer (because of course they did); I had determined it wasn't a problem with any of the individual surround speakers. Again, this has been a problem for years. When recording audio, I just plugged in headphones to save my background track purity, circumventing what I assumed was a frayed wire somewhere in the guts of the thing.
This weekend, it was like a goddamn popcorn maker had been set up at my feet. I was either going to solve the problem (find and repair or eliminate the short) or Solve the Problem (launch the whole speaker system into the sun and make use of headphones at all times). I determined the issue was with the little volume control cable, the removal of which irrationally made the whole system go silent. I couldn't see anything wrong with the prongs in the plug, even though this was obviously the sound of something making contact where it shouldn't. In desperation, I used the canned air on the port.
Blessed silence. Best I can figure, there had been a stray hair caught in the port, crossing prongs that should not, for years. YEARS. I have taken the whole thing apart multiple times, but never succeeded in dislodging this bit of dog fur or whatever. I just endured this incessant popping noise because what else was I supposed to do--replace the offending object? Who do you take me for?
I am the embodiment of the failure to observe the phrase, "it's better to light a candle than curse the dark." I'm over here navigating by touch rather than investigate the merest possibility of a light switch, grumbling all the while about how bleeding hard it is to read in this room.
It's a wonder I survived to adulthood. But never mind that. This has been the weekend of losing my patience with shit and just letting myself have nice things.
