April 19, 2010

4/19/1995

I lived most of my life in Texas and spent summers visiting my grandparents in Oklahoma. For a short while, we lived in Oklahoma City near my grandparents. As a Texan, I am bound by law to make fun of Okies - particularly my sister since she was born in Oklahoma City.

I was fascinated by Founders Tower downtown and often begged Grandma to take me there just because I thought the building was so interesting. I don't recall the Murrah Building, although it was built in 1977, before my grandparents moved out to the Talequah area.

In 1995, I was walking through the student union. I'd moved to a state "up north" for graduate school and I'd been there - and regretting it - for 8 months.

I never felt so out of place as looking at the familiar landscape of Oklahoma City as I did walking by that big screen in the student union fifteen years ago today. That was one of my cities. A place where I had lived. The place my grandparents had lived. The place my little sister was born. And some dirtbag had blown a building up.

This was the city where I took a magic class. Where I learned about Zotz candies and where I got to be in the audience for a TV show and was shown the engineers' booth.

WTF just happened?

I remember a moment of wanting to rush forward to help.

And then remembering that I was some 800 miles away. I could only watch. Feel helpless.

9:02 a.m.

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:17 AM | Comments (0) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Struggles | Stumble

April 12, 2010

iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Flash

I've really grown sick of the constant whinging about Apple's iPhone OS not supporting Flash. There are actual real reasons that don't have to do with some spat with Adobe (who now makes the Flash program) or making cold, hard cash.

Think about the websites which are currently built in Flash. Many of them rely on a programming event "mouseover." On a touchscreen, where is your mouse? Can you hover over something with your mouse on a touchscreen? How sensitive does the touchscreen have to be in order to differentiate between hovering your finger lightly over something and pressing down for a button action?

Touchscreens are an awesome thing to me, but they are still a fairly young technology and simply don't have all the capability that we have via a computer. It's not so much a fundamental flaw of the modern touchscreen as it is a developing tech - we're just not there yet. (And should we be or should we be searching out new paradigms?)

Now, what would be more frustrating to you as a user? Seeing a little brick icon on a bunch of sites because they use Flash or attempting to interact with a site, but not being able to make it work - and having no idea WHY it wasn't working? Frankly, I like Apple's solution once I thought about it.

Maybe I get this because I'm a web designer who knows Flash. I'm no great ActionScript programmer, but I know the basics and have made my share of animated Flash banners using ActionScript rather than keyframes. But I've heard a lot of grousing from other web folk who really ought to know better.

All of the grousing that iPhone doesn't support Flash, the iPad's mere existence on the face of the planet, Adobe's premature development of a Flash to iPhone conversion ...

... it all sounds like sour grapes from people who couldn't tell the difference between a shriveled, sour grape and a plump, sweet grape if the good grape ran off the vine, onto the table and did a dance routine right in front of them.

Instead, they'd complain that now even grapes want their fifteen minutes on So You Think You Can Dance and begin naming all the reasons why the grape should be smashed and made to feel inferior instead of marveling at the fact that the grape is freaking dancing in front of them.

Thoughtful criticism is an important part of life.

Constant complaining because every little thing doesn't suit your every little need shouldn't be a part of our lives at all.

Criticizing the iPad for not being "as good as a netbook" is lame. It's not a netbook. It's an iPad. It's not really an e-book reader; it's not really a computer or laptop or netbook; it's kind of but not really an overgrown iPod touch. It's a new thing. There's not exactly a comparison for it just yet. Relax. What does it matter to you if this product fails or becomes the new big thing? Why the hatred?

Why snap to instant judgments?

That said, I'm also sick of Adobe's attitude. (For the non-designers, Adobe makes the Flash program)

When Apple first launched OS X, they did it in a way that really impressed me because it offered both users and developers time to get used to the OS before requiring upgrades to all of your programs. There were three ways to develop a program - but at first, this didn't impact users at all. You could load a program in "Classic" mode and continue to use all of your old programs you'd already bought and paid for. Developers could use an intermediate way of producing code that would make a program work in OS X without relying on Classic. And finally, developers could write a program "native" to the new operating system. The best choice would be a native program because those would run the most smoothly. Classic programs would have to be "translated" to run and like a kid's game of "Telephone," that usually leads to odd snags. The same with the intermediate solution.

But Adobe waited forever before finally writing their software native to OS X.

The iPhone OS / Flash debacle is honestly more of the same. Adobe seems to believe that "translation" is a good and acceptable way to code rather than writing programs in native languages. Personally, I feel that's a flawed way to code.

Let's put it this way - all computers speak machine language, a series of 0s and 1s indicating "on" and "off." A particular type of computer uses a language optimized to the hardware to translate from human coding to machine language. So, we have human thought to programming language to machine language to action. Plenty of room for translation mistakes already. But if you choose to write your program in a format not native to that machine and its hardware, you're introducing yet another translation to the equation and increasing the likelihood of mistranslations and errors ... or just slow-downs as the machine tries to translate so many levels.

So Adobe thinking that a Flash to iPhone export option was a good idea was, in my opinion, a fundamentally flawed thinking process. At best, it would create a flood of mostly-functional apps for the iPhone (and iPod touch and iPad). More likely, it would flood the marketplace with bug-laden, slow apps which did not please the customer, partly due to the translation issues and partly due to the number of additional non-programmers who would have access to a fairly easy way to slap some pieces of programming together and calling it an app.

Is Apple's move about the bottom line? Yeah, it's about money. Is it about some long-standing dispute with Adobe? I don't think it is, at least not in the way that some think. It might be a reaction to Adobe's perceived programming philosophy, but I think that's rooted in bringing about Apple's tag line ... "it just works."

And you can't say, "it just works" if the software is terribly buggy and mistranslated ....

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:37 AM | Comments (0) | Design | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

April 5, 2010

Suffer Little Children

I was raised Catholic. My mother is still devoutly Catholic. My aunt is still devoutly Catholic and the chair of the religious studies department of a large Catholic university to boot. My sister and my cousins, all Catholic. I am the only oddball in the family to leave the church.

The others make assumptions as to why, although no one has been brave enough to ask. As far as I can tell, they make two general assumptions: 1) I left because I'm gay and the Church has no love for the queers. 2) I left because while not abused by any clergy, I was abused and probably don't like how the Church is handling abuse claims today.

Both assumptions are incorrect.

I was a child of questions. "Don't do X" was immediately followed with why not? If that wasn't actually explained to me, I did "X" anyway, largely to find out what the problem was. If an adult or child couldn't explain something to me, then it didn't exist to me. I can remember being at a friend's house in grade school and asking where her kitten was. No answer. A little later I asked again. And again. And again, until one of the other kids took me aside and explained that the kitten had feline leukemia and was dead. I couldn't seem to pick up on the social cues that everyone else had picked up on ... and I had to have an answer.

My mother learned quickly NOT to tell me, "you can't do X," because I would promptly do X just to show that I could too so do it. She also learned to quit telling me "you can't say X" for the same reason.

The Catholicism I grew up with was largely built of "you can't" without explanations. I drove my CCD (Catholic "Sunday" School) teachers crazy with my questions.

"You have to go to church every Sunday."

"But what if you live too far away from a church? Can't you just read the Bible all day long on Sunday and have that count?"

I was planning, you see, on moving to the middle of nowhere, totally off the grid, in a log cabin house I somehow miraculously built myself with an ingenious water trough system that would give me electricity (in some magical fashion - I couldn't be bothered with the minute details just yet).

"No, that's not enough, you have to attend Mass with a priest."

"But if you live in the middle of nowhere and can't get to a church, I mean. Is it still a sin."

"Yes."

"But why?"

"Because you chose to live away from the Church."

Oh well, for Pete's freaking sake. Nothing the teacher said would make me believe that God would be so petty as insist we drive 10 hours to find a Catholic Church just to hear some priest ramble about giving money to the church during his ten minute sermon. Seemed to me that the priests I knew were too boring to count as really going to church and we'd obviously be better served by doing something active for God instead. Reading the Bible, doing good works, something.

In fact, failing to get a good answer (or the answer I wanted, you can interpret that either way), I began taking a hard look at my church. For a long time, I assumed that the problem was with my specific parish. I remembered kind of liking church in Austin, but the Monsignor who ran our church seemed a bitter old man who simply wanted his parishioners' cash.

It was, of course, a bit more complex than that, but at 12 or so, I couldn't see it yet.

There was no youth group ... every time a young "helper" priest was assigned to Most Blessed Sacrament, the Monsignor ran him off in a matter of months. Youth groups were started and fell by the wayside with each one. There was no way to engage with the church at the time. I couldn't serve at the altar. I was too little to be a reader. Too little to be a Eucharistic minister. The only thing I could "do" was sit and listen.

Being passive has never been a strong point for me. And yet, that was all that was being asked.

I wanted to be part of things. Discussion, activity, mission work ... something to demonstrate the faith I was being told to believe. It wasn't enough to talk about the Good Samaritan, where was my chance to act that way? To help someone?

By the time Confirmation rolled around, I already knew I was not, in my heart, Catholic anymore. I disagreed with far too many tenets of the faith. I was not a docile lamb to be led. I needed discussion, activity, challenges and I was not getting them. I didn't really believe in the infallibility of priests or the Pope.

But I couldn't figure out how to tell my family that.

I read Joyce's Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man ... and as Stephen said, I wasn't Catholic, but I sure wasn't Protestant, either. After reading several novels by Chaim Potok, I contemplated converting to Judaism ... but there were several issues there.

Then came my first year in college ... and I was just about ready to tell Mom my big secret ... that I just couldn't pretend to be Catholic any more ...

... and some idjit called the house to tell Mom I was gay. So of course that was a whole different trauma, and to be honest, Mom just assumed that I was no longer Catholic because of it. That phone call set off a whole avalanche of events - I was kicked out (although I already had a lease signed to move out within about 6 weeks anyway); Mom divorced Dad within about 12 weeks of that phone call; Mom moved an hour away. Best though - I was no longer expected to go to a church in which I no longer believed.

Let me make this clear: I do not hate the Catholic Church. I just don't believe in the hierarchy. I don't think any less of my family for continuing as Catholics. I admire them, particularly my aunt and cousins who are very active in their churches and have found ways to disagree with some tenets and yet still retain faith not just in God, but in the Catholic Church. Much of what led me to early disgruntlement with the church had more to do with a specific priest ill-suited for the congregation he found himself in and some not very thorough CCD teachers. Had the early foundation been more strong, I might have felt more comfortable working within the Catholic church instead of having to find my way out.

So when I say that I am DISGUSTED with the current pope and the sexual abuse disaster, please understand that it is not some kind of uninformed and misdirected emotion.

The vatican has made it pretty clear to me that they prefer to push off blame. First, they tried insinuating (or, in some cases downright saying) that if they could just clear the queers out of the priesthood, the problem would be over. Of course, this completely ignores the girls and women who've been abused by priests. It also ignores the fact that most of these priests committing abuse are not necessarily gay. They are pedophiles and pederasts (men who are attracted to adolescent young men). In other words, the church would begin a crackdown on queers in the priesthood and obviously this kind of crap would become a thing of the past. Move along, nothing to see here.

This ignores the good homosexual priests who've remained celibate. (The homosexual issue is separate from the abuse issue - and besides, if the priest is celibate and only the homosexual sex act is actually a sin, then why care if they are priests????)
It ignores the heterosexual priests who have abused their position.
It ignores the heterosexual priests who are sexually stunted and don't know how to help their parishioners when they come for advice.

I am not going to get into whether or not celibacy "causes" the kinds of problems the Catholic Church is facing right now. I think it's far more complex than a simple answer like that.

I am furious that the way the church has handled the issue up until now is through silence and secrecy, the very things that abusers instill in their victims and perhaps the hardest barriers to getting those victims turned into strong survivors. I know ... it took me a number of years to be able to admit to myself what had happened to me. And it took a seemingly ridiculous number of additional years to be able to physically write or utter the words, much less tell someone else.

For the church, which is supposed to be a place of refuge, solace and safety to essentially tell people "forgive and most of all forget," and insist on reinforcing secrecy, shame and silence is, to me, completely unforgivable.

Catholics are to obey the hierarchy. I understand this. It is the main problem I had with Catholicism ... and the reason why is being played out so publicly right now.

How can any person of conscience keep silent about the types of things that they knew were happening? There are documents of bishops, local priests, etc, begging the next person up in the hierarchy to do SOMETHING about some priest who'd done something horribly wrong. How could they in good conscience keep those secrets just because their bishop or cardinal told them to do so?

Why did any member of the church think this was a healthy and healing way to handle the problem?

From paperwork now coming out, it looks like now Pope Benedict, then Cardinal Ratzinger, knew about at least some of these cases. Some of the truly heinous cases ... and did nothing.

The church claims he tried to fast-track some of these cases, but the facts seem to indicate otherwise. (I'm thinking particularly about the Wisconsin case with the school for the deaf.) At the very least, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he either knew about such cases or was woefully negligent in his duties. After all, the Wisconsin case involved the highest priority - a priest accused of molesting in the confessional, sullying the sacrament of confession - and accused of molesting an absolutely insane number of boys.

One case in Germany seems to sum up the reaction of the Catholic church:

A German man who after many, many years finally was able to physically say that he'd been abused, was first disowned by family who refused to believe him. Then he reported the men who'd abused him to the church. He was offered a smallish sum of money ... on the legal condition that he never speak of it again. This made him angry, and rightfully so. He'd worked so hard to finally be able to speak and break his silence.

He wrote to the Pope - at that time John Paul II - asking for help, and received a letter from Rome.

It contained no apology. Instead, a Vatican official wrote that the Pope would pray for him and encouraged him to return to the family of the Church.

(source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8564378.stm retrieved 4/5/2010)

Other news sources report that Pope John Paul II knew about other cases as well ... and did nothing. That Ratzinger knew or should have known about cases ... and did nothing. (Or moved with glacial speed.)

I don't know for sure. I do know that the church's reaction to this now is what has me both incensed and more likely to believe the worst. One cardinal said this is all "petty gossip." The pope's personal priest attempted to read a passage from a Jewish friend's letter and seemed to indicate that the "persecution" the church was experiencing was just like anti-Semitism.

Another article points out a cardinal who's had to deal with the aftermath of a pedophile, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Groer’s successor, criticised the handling of that scandal [Groer is believed to have abused some 2,000 boys] and other abuse cases last week after holding a special service in St Stephen’s cathedral, Vienna, entitled “Admitting our guilt”.

Schönborn condemned the “sinful structures” within the church and the patterns of “silencing” victims and “looking away”.

(source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7086738.ece retrieved 4/5/2010)

Schönborn and others seem to be insisting that Cardinal Ratzinger tried to do the right thing, but that Pope John Paul II is the one to blame.

They all miss the point.

A true person of conscience, once they know about such heinous abuses had a moral duty to STOP IT. If they could not do that from within the system, they should have, in the spirit of Jesus, gone outside the Vatican's system.

While the survivors and victims' families may want to place blame precisely where blame is due ... those less directly affected just want the church to 'fess up.

I don't care if it was Ratzinger's fault or John Paul's fault that Father Murphy wasn't instantly removed and laicized. I really don't. I want Pope Benedict to say, "We should have removed him sooner. We should have had a better process, a faster process by which to determine guilt and then laicize him from the priesthood. We messed up, but we're looking at what went wrong and using that to better our process and our system so this doesn't happen again."

I have heard of a document supposedly kept under lock and key in which bishops were told to NOT go to the authorities in abuse allegations, but to keep the parishioner quiet and send the info along to the Vatican so the priest could be moved somewhere else.

Those who are speaking out about this, seem to want to blame John Paul II. I don't know if they're simply pushing this off on a dead man who can't defend himself ... or if John Paul II was truly to blame. I don't really care. Pope Benedict is in charge now and he's got a lot of work to do to earn back the trust of so many who feel the Church as a whole has been lying, has been concealing, has been betraying the very people they are supposed to shepherd.

It's not about blame. It's about taking responsibility.

Claiming the church is being persecuted, that people are engaging in "petty gossip," these are not the responses representative of a loving God. They're the responses of a child with a hand in the cookie jar and crumbs all over their shirt.

(Title of post from Matthew 19:14 (King James Version)
14 But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:15 AM | Comments (5) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Struggles | Stumble

October 9, 2009

The Man Who Knew Cliff

September of 1990 ... I'm taking a sophomore English lit class that I'd been excited about prior to the semester's start. I'd checked out the books in the bookstore for the class and we weren't using an anthology - and I had not read all of the books on the shelf. Hey, I was an English major after I realized I didn't have enough time to work full-time and be a drama major.

First day of class, no teacher.

In walks the department secretary. Oh hell.

For a moment after she spoke, I thought we'd lucked out. Our professor had gotten some kind of award and would be in England for the semester, but they weren't going to cancel the class. They'd have an instructor for us by the next class.

He wound up being literally the worst teacher I have EVER had the misfortune of having. In fact, as far as teaching his students anything, I think he is easily in the running for worst teacher ever. Oh, the stories I could tell (and will at some point) about this man.

But in September, he told us he would not be in town for our first exam as he'd scheduled an out of town vacation before he landed the teaching gig. Okay. Fair enough.

Before he left, he tells us ... there will be four questions on the test. Pick one of the questions and write your essay on that. Fine. Typical English exam.

Day of the test shows up. Secretary comes in and hands us the test and says ... answer all four questions.

Excuse me? WTF? We protest. She goes off to call him in Nova Scotia or wherever the hell he was fishing. Comes back. Yes. Answer all four.

I have had it with this man at this point. I decide to write technically correct paragraphs, but ridiculous ones to turn in on a college exam.

He hands the exams back (eventually, obviously I'm skipping some things here - and be glad I'm not making you live through all of it). I fully expect a D or an F on this exam because I literally wrote a single shitty paragraph for each of the "other" three exam questions.

A

Very nicely written

Oh.
My.
God.

Now the first essay question I answered was a good five paragraphs long. It was a decent delving into the material for an hour long exam. I got one comment on that answer - correcting a switch in verb tense. (During a timed test ... yeah, I wasn't looking for grammar details, I thought it was a lit content exam, silly me.)

Second test question: With reference to incidents, in Beowulf, describe some of the violent action.

My answer, tongue firmly in cheek:

Beowulf is full of violent action. Beowulf pulled Grendel's arm off to kill him. As Beowulf fought Grendel's mother, monsters tore at his legs. When Beowulf killed Grendel's mom, the waters boiled with blood. Beowulf chopped off Grendel's head for spite after he discovered Grendel's corpse. When fighting the dragon, heads melted. In short, there was more violent action in Beowulf than in professional hockey.

Wow. For a college sophomore English class. UGH!

Third test question: Write a short essay describing the "somber grandeur" of Beowulf.

My answer, tongue still firmly in cheek and still peeved:

Beowulf is characterized by its somber grandeur. For example, nearly everyone dies. Death is certainly somber. As for the grandeur, the use of language and heroic ideal is exquisite. Beowulf doesn't wear armour, he wears his "war-garment." He doesn't cross the sea, he travels across the "whale-way." It is this beautiful use of kennings and exquisite language that makes Beowulf something to study long after its creation.

TRIPE! Pure and utter sycophantic GARBAGE. It says NOTHING.

He wrote "very good" next to that paragraph. I shit you not, people.

Very good if I was a junior high student, maybe.

To this day, I still shake my head in disbelief over that class.

Oh, and the title of this piece? Yeah, this dude claimed he went to school with Cliff. You know, Cliff. The guy who started Cliff's Notes.

Now THAT doesn't surprise me. *sigh*

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:41 PM | Comments (1) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

September 20, 2009

There Is No System

This is part three. For part one, please read "When I Was 30."

Sorry, folks, didn't mean to leave you hanging for a week for the next post, but it's been a crazy week. I probably shouldn't take time out to write this post ... but you've been waiting long enough.

I am good at getting by. I should probably be grateful for that talent, skill ... luck, whatever it is. But I'm not. I'm tired of it.

You see, that skill at getting by was what kept me going with cancer for two years before the diagnosis. Perhaps if I'd not been able to get by, my doctor would have run a simple CBC and questioned my hemoglobin count. Perhaps the cancer would have been caught earlier. Perhaps if I had just quit my job when the welfare worker told me to, I would not have had mounds of bills that I worried about paying even more than I worried about the cancer killing me.

And that skill at getting by started when I was much younger. It kept me from getting help in numerous situations as a child - learning disabilities, problems at home, problems with bullies at school. I saw the look on whatever tired adult's face and knew they did not want to deal with the issue if I could manage to deal with it. Not wanting to disappoint an adult or make them feel like I couldn't handle something ... I always found a way to handle it. Even if it meant that I simply suffered in silence.

Here I had done what I thought were the right things - got a recommendation of a doctor from a friend. A good doctor, supposedly. When I started getting sick I went to the doctor. And things fell apart because he knew I had no insurance. He assumed that I would be unable to pay for the simplest blood test. It wasn't true, but he didn't ask and I didn't know what to ask for.

At any rate, I lucked out and was given treatments. I was looking at a mountain of expenses from the chemo treatments themselves to the nearly week-long hospital stay complete with biopsy surgery, anesthesiologist and X-ray bills, CT scans, a PET scan.

After it was all over, I was hired for a full-time teaching gig - with health insurance. I was making more money than I had ever made, though it still wasn't much. I now had to figure out how I was going to pay off my college debt, pay off the debt I'd run up just living and working minimum wage jobs, trying to buy my books cheaply, fixing my clunker car so I could get to chemo treatments ...

It wasn't going to happen.

I tried to rearrange reality for a while - "I reject your reality and substitute my own" (you have to say this in Mythbusters' Adam Savage voice - but it just wasn't working.

And to be honest, I was tired of trying to make everything work by myself.

I had paid for college myself, mostly. I'd moved out at 19 and began working full time whilst I went to school. Seven years of working full time and going to school. Putting semesters on charge cards because I had no other way to pay and a belief in my future. Car repairs on the charge card because I made just enough to cover bills and have $20 every two weeks for spending money. Then there was the 1000 mile move from Texas to go to graduate school. I sold much of my furniture in an attempt to both reduce stuff I needed to move and fund the gas money and U-Haul rental.

I was doing what I had gone to school to do and was surprised to discover that despite what we'd been told, getting a full-time teaching gig was not going to be a piece of cake as the baby-boomers weren't quite ready to retire and certainly weren't retiring in the droves we'd been told to expect. So despite now having a full-time teaching gig and health insurance, we were a dime a dozen and paid accordingly.

I did what I had to do with a great deal of soul-searching ... a great deal of self-flagellation ... a great deal of telling myself that this was one of those hard choices that adults just have to make sometimes.

I declared bankruptcy. I, who had never missed any bill payment before this. I, who had rarely if ever had a bill paid late (and if so, was probably only by a day or so). I, who was paranoid about making sure there was enough money for bills.

My credit was now toast. I was out from under the ridiculous mound of bills from the chemotherapy, the hospital, surgery ... and from my college bills. And all I could think about was the fact that I shirked my responsibilities. I had meant to find a way to pay for all of those things during college. And if I hadn't gotten sick, I would have paid it all off. I felt horrible for agreeing to treatment, to the hospital, to the doctors, and knowing that there was just such a slim chance that I could pay.

But what choice did I have, in the end? Die or live?

No one should have to make that choice.

No one should skip regular doctor visits because they don't think they can afford to pay the doctor, or for the medicine or treatments if necessary.

And the doctors deserve to get paid for the work that they do.

I do not want to trust my life to an insurance company whose focus is the bottom line and how much money they can give their shareholders and their executives.

I do not trust the office manager who told another doctor (not the idiot I described earlier) that she could not spend more than 10 minutes per patient because it was not cost-effective.

I do not trust the drug companies who wine and dine doctors, nurses and support staff with awesome free lunches and swag so that the doctors will prescribe their particular drug.

I do not trust the drug companies or insurance companies who lobby congress to maintain their status quo and fatten their bottom lines.

I do not know what the answer is. I only know that we are broken right now. Change is frightening.

But dying because you're scared you can't afford treatment just shouldn't be a concern. For any of us.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:21 PM | Comments (0) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Struggles | Stumble

August 22, 2009

Puppies Chew Things

Puppies are fun. They're cute. They can be snuggly. They ADORE you.

They also make messes and, if they are dachshund puppies, they are adorably curious about everything.

Including my very happy Panasonic Slimz headphones that I use to listen to my Sleepmaker Storms app to go to sleep at night because they're very low profile and great quality. Tieg the dachshund puppy is very curious about these weird things I put over my ears and especially that interesting looking thing at the end that goes into that black glassy thing.

He chewed the headphone plug off.

Had he chewed the cord in half, I could have just spliced it together. But nooooo, he had to chew the plug freaking off.

So, with a little help from Chris Metcalf, I decided to salvage my relatively expensive headphones.

I snagged the soldering iron, headed out to Radio Shack for a gold headphone plug and began my task early this afternoon.

The freaking wires would NOT stay where I put them, the soldering iron had a tip way too wide for working with electronics ... but a ridiculous amount of time later I have functioning headphones again. I will probably get another headphone plug and a soldering iron with a very fine tip to it and do it again.

For now, I'll remember to pick up the headphones ... and keep a closer eye on the Wee Dangerous Tieg's whereabouts.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:44 PM | Comments (3) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble