I do firmly believe in fixing broken things that still have a use – for three reasons:
- …because if I have to replace the item it costs money that I would rather not spend…
- …because the new thing I buy has all the embedded energy cost of manufacture/transport etc that the old thing has kinda 'paid off' over the years…
- …because the old thing is going to go in the landfill…
However sometimes it just gets silly. Emma's laser printer has an interesting design feature where dust can get in the optics onto the mirrors eventually causing the printer to mis-calibrate. <SARCASM>Thanks for that great design HP</SARCASM>. The effect is that the magenta fades really badly at the edges. I have fixed this once before but last night it was time to tackle it again. If you really want to know what I had to do (or if you have an HP 2605 laser printer with dodgy colour) read this great post . The only nerdy pleasure I got from this was that with the addition of a power driver and some rock music to the instructions I had the printer cleaned and re-assembled in under an hour ;-). Oh and that included nipping to the cottage to wipe down the new grout!
Anyway once the printer was tested it was 8pm so I put on the computer/TV/amplifier ready to enjoy a hard earned episode of Breaking Bad. I was just making a drink when I heard Starsky (the cat) being sick – so I headed into the living room to clean up. At first I couldn't find the mess – and then I saw it – on top of the amplifier. Oh No! I grabbed the kitchen towel and tried to mop up, but it was already dripping through the vents into the amp. Ewwww!
Then I noticed the amp had turned itself off – with the exception of a flashing light on the front. I knew it had protection against shorting the speaker terminals. But protection against cat vomit – impressive! So it was out with the power driver and q-tips (cotton buds) again. Opened up the case, cleaned everything up, dried it and powered up. The amp came on but was super quite – more of a none amp! Sounded like only the pre-amps were working, but not the heavy duty stuff. Anyway I retired to bed defeated for the night. Luckily the story has a happy ending – powered everything on this morning – and we have LOUD again – the amp now goes up to 11 (well actually +18 db) which is enough to make me worry about structural damage.
So I am writing this listening to The Pretty Reckless LOUD (the lead singer is the little girl from How the Grinch Stole Christmas believe it or not….but what a voice!)
Right – what else needs a good fixing round here…
What else needs fixing – err, the cat? 😉