Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Headphones, the Vacuum, and the Heritage of Making Things Work

My headphones at work met an early demise last week at in the jaws of a vacuum cleaner. The cleaning lady left a nice note offering to replace them, but balked when she learned of the cost — not pocket change, for sure. (When you wear headphones as much as I do, it starts to make sense to buy a nice pair, and these were the nicest pair to date.)

Growing up as I did, though, one gets the idea that anything can be repaired, with enough patience and ingenuity. So I tried, and it required plenty of both — there were wires broken all over the place, and it was arguably the toughest soldering job I've taken on.


Itty-bitty. The circuit board is for the noise-canceling feature that I've grown rather fond of.

In the end, I succeeded, though. I think. They're definitly not going to survive another trip through a sweeper, but they work. I'm the grandson, son, and son-in-law of electrical engineers, all of whom had a reputation for being able to fix just about anything — It's in my genes. It's in my family. I had to try!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Andy,
You are also the son of an electrical engineeer, but I went into physics in grad school.
Congratulations on continuing an excellent tradition.
Love, Dad

Andy said...

My bad. Edited for accuracy!