Husband gets wild hair. Let’s put all the CDs inside a stereo unit. In fact, let’s get two or three of these things and put the stuff we mostly listen to on them.
Ah, honey? Let’s try one. First. If it works, we’ll think about running them in series. Okay?
Awwwww. Yeah. Okay. You’re probably right.
I roll eyes. He gets so enthusiastic, then, when you suggest just a tad bit of self-restraint, it’s like you dashed cold water on him. But he dries off fast. Good thing.
But. This is going to be a P-R-O-J-E-C-T. With a super capital P.
Hubs BUYS Sony CDP-CX445. It arrives, 2nd day air UPS. I groan when I see, then HEFT, the box.
Okaaaaaay, I think, brace yourself, knowing that means that I’m going to spend all night, all day, all night, all day again, and probably another all day, helping. There goes the weekend!
He’s so excited when he hears it actually got here. On time. In Podunk, Idaho, no less. He races home. He unpacks it. He pulls 400 CD’s, stashing the jewel cases in a box. He dumps the Styrofoam packing into the garbage. He hasn’t yet broken the box down, though, and I have to keep walking around it to help him when he smartly commands, “Hand me that wire. Hand me that flashlight. Hold this.”
P-R-O-J-E-C-T.
He’s in bliss.
So I finally crash. He stays up till 4AM loading the CD’s into it. Morning comes. He’s out of bed in a flash, four hours earlier than usual.
P-R-O-J-E-C-T.
“Will you type the artists, album names, and slot numbers for me into an Excel spreadsheet?”
Right. “Okay,” I say, hoping it will only take maybe an hour to do. I mean 400 slots is a piece of cake to type. Should only take a little bit of time, right? Because how bad can a piece of electronics slow something down.
HINT: It takes almost a full minute for the machine to read the Artist and Album label because it first has to laboriously load the CD, taste it, think about it, then decide if it wants to show you the answer. (I start twitching after the first five. I’ll be a basket case after fifty, never mind you might as well call the men in white coats after the full four-hundred.)
We start doing a comedy show to ease the pain as he presses next and I wait patiently like dutiful wife, fingers hovering over keys.
…We get through 200 of them…in two hours. I’m about buggy. And…and…and…we’re halfway through. He does a rah-rah arm pump. I just want to GET DONE. “And 201?” I ask.
“It’s not reading it,” says he, which means he has to hit play so we can listen to it to identify artist/album. And….
THE MACHINE IS SKIPPING.
We check again. Nope, disc is fine. Change the CD to somewhere else. Nope, disc is fine. Load something else into slot 201. Skips. Ummmm. Go backwards and forwards from 200. Skip. Stops skipping when it is at 189. Everything back of 189 is fine. Everything forward of 189 skips.
Now what?
Call electronic stores.
Call everybody.
And….
I-Pod.
No. Not. Never.
And….
…And he’s still researching “another solution.”
So, what are we going to be doing? Tearing this entire house apart again, laboriously loading CD’s back into their jewel cases, and….
And…I don’t know.
I think I’ll put on some Dokken on the five CD changer and try to ease my migraine.
…I HATE Sony. Have since they started that proprietary nonsense. Then they started that invasive crap. Sony = contemptible. And their electronics SUX a bad egg.
My father was a WWII flying ace. He flew P-51 Mustangs, he taught cadets to fly them, as well. He wound up having to ditch in the North Sea three times. He lost friends, comrades, and “wings” (wingmates) in that war. (He flew in the European theatre, flying out of Britain.) I know he was in the bombing of Dresden as air cover, and I know it was one of his worst nightmares of the war.