i'd been wanting to get a present for myself w some of the money ive not spent on active addiction. however, i wanted to wait til something came a long that i impulsively wanted and just do it. i struggle w inadequacy in many areas in my life including w money so this is a real special treat for me. That's a nice way of saying that i'm cheap.
so, our record player has been messing up. its one of those cd/tape/record players with speakers built in and i've used old computer speakers and a subwoofer for a little better sound. anyway, all the speeds have been playing too slow and it doesnt have screws or anyway to take it apart to adjust the motor without destroying it.
i'd put off taking it to get fixed for a month. however, liz bought an amy winehouse record (lioness) and we wanted to listen to it. so, yesterday after she left for work i was going to take it to a place that fixes audio equipment.
for decades in columbus/upper arlington area there has been a business called needle and a haystack. its cool and weird at the same time. u could take your record player there and theyd quickly swap out belts get new needles and the guys were totes serious and wore labcoats. the last time i was there they didnt to my dismay have the labcoats on but they did have usb driven turntables so i thought if worse comes to worse i could spend 50 to 150 bucks on a new turntable.
so i get there and they are not there anymore. its some tailor shop. as i was leaving a lady from the business above where they were was just coming back and she told me that they just closed shop and skipped town one day. kind of a shock now. i mean my dad would take his record player there in like the late 70s early 80's. she also told me that there some pending issue with the attorney general. so i may have to do some google investergating to snoop out the bottom of the mystery.
anyhow, back in my car and right across the street from a half price books (2nd and everything kind of store mainly books) i leaned over and grabbed a bookmark out of my game of thrones book and called the number to the store and asked if they still had any usb turntables? he looked and said no but that he had a nice one used.
so i drove over to look at it and fortunately the guy that sold it to them works there and could answer questions. mainly can i plug it into my tv and use the speakers off of that. but its a really nice brookstone one that has all kinds of computer possiblities but i just wanted it for the usb to tv. anyway, it was only 50 bucks. score!
i mentioned to the cashier that i was using my smoking money on this and he told me he quit 4 years ago. i told him about the ex website and the survey money i got too and told him to still sign up. he said way to go cdc! we both laughed.
so, i got it home and after a punch of cursing and dropping things and fiddling with cords and trying to plug it into everywhere. i finally gave up. then i was like, oh hold on, theres gotta be someone else whos tried this. so i googled it. so it turns out im not using the usb but bc of that functionality its gotta a built in amp so i can plug it into the av jacks. now i had sorta tried that before. however in the thread on google the guy said that u have to fool the tv into taking the audio by having the video from something (in my case the vcr) plugged in with the device on.
eureeka! so instead of listening to the amy record with a blue screen i but in a vhs copy of the incredible mr limpett and then hooked up the pc speakers and subwoofer to the tv and now we have amazing poor mans surround sound too.
the point of this post is eureeka! in the movie pi, the protagonists friend relates the story of archimedes who is the guy that figured out that water displacement and buoyancy determines mass etc (important if trying to figure out if stuff is solid gold). the king tasks him to find a solution and he frets and frets. finally his wife tells his stinky butt to take a bath. so as hes relaxing he figures out the solution and runs out of the bath thru the town screaming eureeka! the point is that we try and try to figure out this thing called life or addiction and sometimes we just need to relax and good unexpected things happen.
