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[ Unrelated note: is it just me or was everybody off the Internet today? It's, like, one kerspillionth the normal activity level in my usual hangouts. ]
Of course, just because one thing started working after being turned off and on again doesn't mean that anything else necessarily will, ever. It seems to have failed magnificently with the Bose radio-speaker which normally serves a valuable role in the home-entertainment complex by sitting on the shelf underneath the VCR That Still Works and the DVD player That Actually Gets Used, But Only By Me. (We kids have collectively bought three DVD players for our parents now and they've watched maybe two DVDs, one of them a National Parks Imax thing which they used to test that the player was hooked up correctly.) It's mostly used as a clock, although around Christmas we do remember it's hooked up to the CD player and we put on some Christmas tunes for ambiance.
Anyway, it recently went into that odd mode where every one of its panel LEDs goes on, and it doesn't respond to button presses. My father asked me to try unplugging and re-plugging it when I had the chance. He was surprised to learn there's a detachable plug at the back of the unit, making it awfully easy to power down and up, and said if he knew that he wouldn't have bothered me. In any case the control panel lights weren't on, but they also couldn't be turned on, and it still didn't respond to button clicks.
On calling tech support my father learned a leading suspect for this behavior is somehow a couple batteries at the base of the unit which we never suspected existed. He gave me exceedingly detailed directions on how to open the case and replace the batteries --- my father thinks I can't follow instructions except in groups of four, maybe five words --- which did nothing to improve things.
While we figure out what to do about it, we've also started trying to remember just when we did get the radio. The leading theory is ``sometime between 1990 and 1996'', although I have a nagging memory of it being refurbished or replaced at some time since then. There's also the question of whether we really need much of a system for a radio we use literally several times a year.
Trivia: In 1965 maintenance workers at Radio City Music Hall scraped off the undersides of auditorium seats an average of twenty pounds of chewing gum every day. Source: Great Fortune: The Epic Of Rockefeller Center Daniel Okrent. Also, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew. But better than not scraping it off, I guess.
Currently Reading: Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography, David Michaelis.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-14 08:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-14 11:05 am (UTC)Why would a VCR ever not work??? Here are some cases he encountered:
When your two-year old shoves music cassette tapes into it.
When your four-year old shoves toast into it.
When (you get the picture) there's cat kibble shoved in it.
When there's a CD in it.
And my favorite: When the entire alphabet's worth of alphabet magnets are shoved into it--not only does prevent you from putting video cassettes in it, those little magnets play havoc with the magnetic video heads/readers.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-15 04:49 am (UTC)We never had interesting problems with the VCRs. We'd just get to the point where it snapped whatever tape was put in, or where it wouldn't turn on.
I know I'm overlooking one broken VCR, but it's been fifteen years so why should I remember it? /p>
gack!
Date: 2011-02-15 06:38 am (UTC)We never had it quite so wild here when it came to our VCR ... :>
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-15 05:01 am (UTC)Well, they are mostly consumer electronics: they'll break right away, or else they'll be just fine for upwards of ten presidential administrations, then suddenly break. Or, with little regular VCR usage, a belt might snap or motor might go bad without the chance to see them in partially-working or degenerating condition.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-15 06:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-15 07:34 am (UTC)As for VCR, Momgoose currently has a VCR/DVD combo player I got her for Christmas in 2007ish. She almost never uses it, as she's got the TiVo (Which was officially bequeathed to her for her 60th birthday.) And that's pretty much just fine for her to fall asleep to at night.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-17 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-18 12:06 am (UTC)I have the same problem with throwing away things that still work, which is one of the things which makes it hard for me to replace a laptop that isn't actively hostile to the idea of functioning.
In fact, there are days when I wonder if I didn't do the wrong thing in buying a new car instead of getting the old Sable of Frequent Malfunctions fixed. The transmission job would have only been something like $1500, after all ... and I could have got the air conditioner fixed too.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-18 08:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-19 06:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-21 01:07 am (UTC)That was my impression. I remember when we got our first turntable microwave and that seemed like one of those real ``moving on up'' moments. I think now maybe those tiny microwaves designed for bachelors in efficiency apartments who never microwave something larger than a tater tot don't have turntables but for the rest it's standard.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-18 12:05 am (UTC)My brother got a VCR/TV combo in the late 90s despite his wariness about combining hardware that way. He just didn't have the space for separate appliances and accepted that if the TV went dead he'd have to replace both. I'm not sure what did fail first after all, but I don't think he has it anymore.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-18 08:10 pm (UTC)--Chi