I'm living somewhere in a new dimension

[austin_dern]

I went to Radio Shack and actually bought something. Well, I buy a five-pack of videotapes occasionally, because I've been taping episodes of the Remastered Original Star Trek With Some New Effects for gafennec but that lasts ten weeks at a stretch (and I think they're running out, as the last two five-packs I bought were actually three-packs and single tapes taped together). This was actually going to the store to buy something, and it could even technically be considered radio related.

I listen to a lot of Internet Radio at the Extruded Office Product since it does see to help keep me awake or somewhat alert and I like catching what Jack Benny was up to. I haven't wanted to use the normal speakers because my door is invariably open (it doesn't close) and I don't see any reason to impose my tastes on whoever might be wandering by. So I was using the only pair of headphones I had available, which was a cheap set that came with the CD player I bought for my car (which has only a cassette player). Follow all that?

Anyway, while leaning back one day I tugged the short cable a little too much and the right earphone stopped playing things. For a short while I could fiddle with the curve just enough to get some sound, but it was airplane speaker-grade not-really-working. Therefore I figured to go price some replacement headphones and if they were reasonable to buy one. I had no mental model for what a pair of earphones should cost, but trusted that I could make do with the cheaper models. I'm sure one can spend as much money as anyone has left in the economy on extremely high-grade earphones with silver-core resistors and such, but I'm in the audio fidelity range of ``never really positive whether stereo or mono is on''.

What I found was a set of earphones with an eighteen-foot-long cable and priced at $4.58. The cashier asked if I wanted to open a Radio Shack charge account for this (no), and if I wanted the protection plan, which would allow free replacement for a year no questions asked for only $2.50. I didn't think there was a greater than fifty percent chance of the earphones needing replacement in a year so I gave it a pass. He hadn't realized how cheap the earphones were either (we talked about it). Also when rung up it turned out the earphones were $4.09.

While the earphones work very nicely and the extra play is good, I noticed two days later the foam was coming off the left speaker.

Trivia: On 19 November 1869, when the inaugural flotilla set off down the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps celebrated his 64th birthday. Source: Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal, Zachary Karabell.

Currently Reading: Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Radio Shack recently disappointed me by not having a SATA cable, which, well, I think as one of their necessary reasons for existence: cables and wires for all eventualities.

I personally recommend these headphones from Sony (http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=11038345), which are comfortable, produce rather good sound, sturdy, and a reasonable price (I found them on sale at Target for $20). They may inspire jokes if you wear them at work due to their size; I received plenty of DJ and several Air Traffic Controller jokes.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

That's curious about Radio Shack, since as far as I can tell about two-fifths of every store is nothing but cables. Was it just a temporary outage or something they never imagined carrying?

For right now, these headphones seem to be doing all right. If they do turn out to be unsuitable in some way --- and so far the worst seems to be if I lean my head forward far enough they slip off, but I don't need to lean that far so often --- I might give them a try. (Of course, as Sony headphones, they're probably spyware.)

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Precisely. Albeit SATA has only been around for five years and is standard on pretty much ever computer sold for the past year as an available hard drive connection method, so it's conceivable.

Best Buy also failed; though they did have cables eSata, which stands for 'exterior SATA' and isn't a failed website scooped up my Amazon.com for pennies on the dollar. Sadly, the exterior and interior cables have different connectors.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Hm. Apparently the collapse of capitalism has reached the point where computer users are expected to form packs of bandits raiding those who carry SATA cables, rather than trusting in supply chains to match up with demand. This could be an exciting time. I'm glad my computer doesn't need repairs, knock (something else) plastic.