Month: August 2023

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"It's Alive!"

Last September, I bought my first CD deck since the early 2000s. I followed that up by replacing about a dozen of the couple hundred CDs that had disappeared in the aftermath of the fire two and a half years ago. Everything was fine for a while, but then one day several of the disks started skipping or just flat out refused to play. Disheartened, and deciding it wasn't worth my time or frustration to try and get them playing (there was nothing physically wrong with any of the disks and they played fine in my Mac), I removed the deck from my system and packed it up.

After stumbling across a YouTube video this morning about how to fix wonky CD players, I decided to give it a go. And wouldn't you know…it worked! I put on the CD that was the worst offender (Pet Shop Boys: Very/Relentless) and both disks played from beginning to end without a single hiccup.

So what did I do to pull to fix it? I got some isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs, and wiped down the laser lens and the rails on which the laser sled rides. There was a small bit of gunk on one of the rails, and that was apparently all it took to throw things off.

yamaha cdx-730 cdx-530 sales brochure

 

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Really Bitch?

I've been doing this job for enough years to know there are a dozen users in any organization who generate 90% of the tickets and are such pains in the ass that you want to take a 2×4 to their smirking faces whenever you have to interact with them. The guy who submitted the ticket above is new to the department, having transferred over from a different division about a month ago. He came in, strutting like royalty, expecting all the little people to willingly bend over and spread their cheeks for him. (He is not management, or even anything remotely worthy of a "VIP" designation.)

It's been one thing after another, and yesterday morning when I arrived at the office I was greeted by not one, but five tickets from this asshole—but this one took the cake.

First off, we no longer provide docking stations for remote workers. We did during COVID when everyone was working from home and had their entire office setups at home, but those days are long over and official policy now is that no one gets a dock for use at home—no matter who they think they are or how much they whine.

Secondly, it's not our fault that you have your personal equipment locked away in an inaccessible cabinet. Sucks to be you, dude.

And lastly—and what caused me to give this to my senior colleague to respond to—was Mr. Shit-Don't-Stink pointing out a spelling error in the online form.