Nailed It! [NOT 12/6/23]

12/6/23 brightersideoflife 24

Hi, friends!

Over the last few weeks I’ve been worried my old cheapie mp3 player that I use in the car is crapping out.

Then I had the inspired thought of “hey moron, try with a different USB cable and see if it that fixes it.”

Good news! I just had a USB cord that got creased too badly up by the connector!

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24 Comments

  1. noice!

    gotta love a simple fix

    unless you are a me who will rebuild half a bike before thinking hey…..maybe the fucker wont start coz i forgot to connect the battery

  2. I get why fly by night companies pop up selling cords on Amazon that fry out in a day. It’s incredibly easy to show up, sell a bunch for cheap, then disappear.

    It’s less clear to me why regular stores carry the garbage ones. CVS or Target ought to be able to sell reliable store branded ones that make customers trust the store brand a bit more, rather than a lot less.

    I’m sure someone at HQ got an annual bonus by cutting a deal with a fly by night company and then getting credit for cutting costs by 3% in their assigned area of misc. electronics. But you’d think the people in charge of customer service would scream bloody hell about their complaint rates going up and their bonuses being cut.

  4. I think my 13-year-old Android phone is finally reaching the end of its useful life. I can’t stand the thought of replacing it, because its predecessor was my beloved BlackBerry, and I’m still processing the trauma from that transition. BH has told me that he will get me a top-of-the-line iPhone, but I don’t really need my phone for very much. I charge it and turn it on ever so often (but not very often, so don’t try to call). I think I’m old enough, but probably not poor enough, to qualify for one of those mythical “Obamaphones” that the Right is always yammering about. Does anyone know what an Obamaphone is? Does anyone actually have one, or know someone who does?

      • Is that a phone? An environmentally friendly hybrid vehicle? A kitchen appliance you can program and control remotely?

        When BH was at his confab and I was bedridden I realized I didn’t know how to even turn on the bedroom TV, let alone work the three remotes to navigate my way to something I’d like to watch. So, like the High Victorian I was meant to be, I pulled down a volume (Edward Gibbons’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume 6) and snuggled in with that and the Faithful Hound.

        If you’re a childless Luddite idiot like I am it is surprisingly easy to disconnect. My floor is very quiet, and I live on the fifth floor, so nothing really happens until dawn, when the sun starts rising and the colony of loud birds start chirping. The dog walker is a building friend, so I wanted to make coffee and breakfast for him, and myself, but that was it. It was very unsettling, living alone. I used to do it all the time, when BH or I were traveling or posted in London. I know that some people leave bad marriages and they feel liberated and are having the best times of their lives. I’ve never intentionally lived alone, though. I went from family/college roommate(s)/boyfriend(s)/Better Half. I don’t think I’d be very good at it if it was supposed to be a permanent way of life.

      • Niiiiiice!!@

        Congratulations on it! And would you mind letting us here know what you think of it, after you’ve had it a bit?

        I’ve still got my S-9, but it’s getting boggy & starting to get the old *hot* once in a while when I charge, zooooo it’s gonna be time to get something newer soon-ish….

        The S-23 might be a bit *shinier* than I need, but it’d be cool to hear what someone who has one thinks of them!

        • I’m moving up from a Galaxy Note 9. No stylus on the S23+, but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used the stylus on both my Note 8 and 9. I didn’t actually buy the 9. They upgraded me when I busted my 8 and I had insurance.

          During our employment troubles, I couldn’t really justify upgrading, but that seems to be behind us now and our phones are all 4+ years old and they’re getting laggy and using battery too quickly. So a visit to the cellphone store was in order.

          I’ll let you know what I think.

    • As far as Obamaphones, some places were bowing to modern reality and acknowledging if you wanted people to stop being on welfare and apply for jobs, they needed a cellphone, so it was worth subsidizing $20 a month for a basic plan so people could stop getting $200 a week or whatever for government assistance. Rightwingers were stuck in a 1998 mindset that cellphones were some kind of crazy luxury and blew a gasket.

      But the short answer is get something around $300 that you keep for 36 months and you’ll be fine. I have a Samsung A53, Motorola has some decent ones, older generations of Google Pixel are generally good too, and I think some other companies are good. Older iPhones are worth a look, and if the SO has an iPhone, there are advantages.

      I don’t use mine for much, but the nice thing is the battery life is good, it connects to a lot of data networks so if I’m stuck at the airport it works. No weird glitches for email, web browsing or texting. The camera is fairly nice but not fancy. It’s a good music player. Even if you only use it every third day, if you keep it for three years that’s about a dollar a day. It’s a reasonable expense. Or even splurge for two dollars a day.

    • I’ve known LOTS of people who have ’em!

       

      Technically, my mom is eligible either for one of those, or the free internet service, buuuuut she hasn’t signed up for either–she just has a $15.00 a month unlimited talk & text Trackfone.

      Dad had an “obamaphone” but I ended up letting it lapse while he was in the nursing home, annnnd it’d be over with anyway, what with him dying last November.

      They’re typically some random brand, which no one has ever heard of, and the last one dad had (a smartphone) had TONS of bloatware… so much, that it was confusing for *me* to use at first–so it was no wonder that poor Dad (who was in the early stages of dementia from his kidney disease when he got it) never answered it or *used* it!

  5. We had this discussion before. I’ve also had crap cables that died, but I found out that some cables are power only, and don’t carry data. So you can’t use them for moving files over. I discovered this when I thought my MP3 player had died as well. It wasn’t dead — I just needed a cable that had a data line in it.

  6. This is very late and off-topic but the insomnia has kicked in and I’m doing a little late-night reading. Can any of you Canadalandians explain to me why you hate Justin Trudeau so much? I was watching a CBC clip of him making some kind of speech, bilingual, of course, and my only thought was, “It must be nice to live in a country governed by someone so young that they’re not cheating death and defying the odds.” Plus I have a crush on him, and I don’t know why, but when the French Canadians speak English I find that accent very alluring.

    I have lost touch with my Canadian kinfolk, unfortunately. It would be weird to call or email one of them out of the blue and say, “Hey, I know the overreaction to the pandemic was ridiculous, on both sides, although you were a little worse, but can you tell me one thing? Why do you hate Justin Trudeau?”

    • Justin is really hated out west. Mostly because of his dad’s national energy program but now because of his carbon tax. They also hate him because he defeated their beloved party three times.

      Our media hates him because he ended Harper’s bullshit propaganda subsidy program which bombed us with ads for his action plan which did nothing. I was looking for work at the time and I tried to call to get in but they didn’t want me. Also our MSM is mostly right wing thanks to Conrad Black Lord Jackass of Beaverbrook who was pardoned by traitor Trump in 2021. Even the CBC which is filled with Harper peons.

      The progressives (NDP) hate him because he crushed their dreams of power. The NDP went to the center while the Libs tacked to the left in 2015 and won.

      At least the NDP and Libs are working to get some serious social programs in place to help people for now.

      He is tolerated in central and eastern Canada. The Libs and NdP control almost all the urban ridings while the Cons have the angry white flight and rural vote. The Cons won the popular vote but didn’t win more seats because of their inability to win urban and suburban ridings. One could call it jerrymandering but it blew up in the Cons faces. Where I lived the corrupt and lazy and fundie shithead (who I went to high school with) got a riding where mostly scared white people lived and LOST in 2015.

      That little shit ended up having to move up north to find a “friendlier” read more white flight riding.

      Right now, the Cons have no one to challenge him just Harper leftovers with no actual plans except more guns, no bortions and no carbon tax.

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