Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Ster eeh! yiye! eeh! yiye! Yo!
Seperating the wheat from the chaffe here.
If you see this diagram
and then this visual below...and your heartbeat doesn't accelerate to the point where your tongue is throbbing and beating out drum beats on the roof of your mouth such that your sounds are emanating to distant villages announcing a pig roast at the family hut tonight, don't bother reading on. You have the cold, calculating heart of an engineer and the point of this post will be lost on you. That, or you may simply consider this the ravings of a technologically obtuse bonehead.
.
Now, if you look at these two diagrams and consider them to be basically different versions of the same dilemna, let me welcome you to the fine world of DIY car stereo installation.
One long weekend ago, when Spring's weather had finally arrived and while neighbours were busy creating their own cacophonous odes to the peace and quiet of home ownership, I'd elected to solve a small problem in my car. It was a problem that was slowly turning into the long lost novel by Philip K. Dick, perhaps the follow-up to his “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”.
The original factory Toyota cd player / tape deck / martini shaker had started to take on a soul, a mind of its own. A year ago, perhaps once or twice a month, it refused to play some of the cd’s that sounded fine in the home unit. Then, as the year passed along, its selectivity and rejection phase juggernauted to where it considered most of my jazz cd’s of the Passe Blasé school and some of the blues cd’s as too depressing for it to listen to. If the cd player wasn’t shooting the cds out, it was skipping back and forth so that songs sounded as if the notes were on a trampoline.
A friend once illustrated the level of acceptance that a human being will come to with a story of home repairs.
There was some problem with one of his walls. It was a sheet-rocked wall, in front of which was his tv set. A blemish, perhaps. Maybe a screw that had popped out a millimeter or two.
You know where this is going, don’t you?
Repairing this mote of an error started with removing the screw, re-drilling a new one…well…mis-drilling that new one. Now, there’s a new hole next to the original screw hole. To correctly fix the new hole, it had to be widened so a patch could be inserted. And, then to do a professional job…. Well, later that day, the hole is now about 8 x 5 inches. He is exasperated. A ball game is on. He sits, beer in one hand, clicker in the other, tools strewn like spent cartridges around the set.
The hole was quite apparent; it sat like a fat shining moon right over the tv set. A day or two passed. And then a week. The hole was still there, unchanged in size. Yet, it wasn’t as visible. A month passed and it disappeared. Well, it didn’t appear in his view. Friends came over and remarked on the hole. They came over a few more times and soon that hole disappeared for them as well.
The cd player was my hole. The skipping was annoying at first and then it became the fabric of my daily commute. I used to drive to work alone. I now commuted with a thing with different musical tastes. The rejection of my choices was becoming less and less frustrating. The only time it seemed to matter was when a new body drove with me. Luckily for them and for me, these new folks didn’t drive often enough to be taken in completely by my cd android’s self-actualizing. This ultimately saved me from the fate that was certain to happen; I would start talking like my android, words skipping from front to back, punctuation totally abolished, and intonation having a complete disconnect from intention.
The ever-loving wife, not as likely to be taken in by androids or the inevitability of a “Blade Runner” world, decided that further mental disintegration on her husband’s part was not in her best interest. It was hard enough understanding my pithy obtuseness without having to deal with sentences constructed in the haphazard stylings of a Pollock. A gift certificate to Crutchfield was in order.
Memories of summers long ago spent on my back in the trunk of a car, on my back under the steering wheel, on my back under the glove compartment came in waves. I was young, I was limber, I was skinny, I had the contortive abilities of Harry Houdini. Ah, sweet youth!
The ordered cd player/stereo/tuner unit arrived. In three days! With sweaty paws, I ripped through the shrink wrap, suffering my first cut of many to come. Changing to stereo work clothes, loose paint-splattered jeans, a t-shirt of Great Grubbiness (guaranteed to keep spectators and skunks at least 10 feet away), and shoes of indeterminate brand, I dragged the necessary tools and the refit kit that came with the stereo out to the car. Carefully laying out the tools, like a surgeon about to take on heart surgery, I prepared the work area.
The work could now begin.
Putting my head down by the brake pedal, I threw my legs up on the head-rest of the driver’s seat.
A light twinge by the neck. Ouch!
A throbbing of the leg muscle and then that old sciatic nerve seizure.
I’d forgotten.
I wasn’t young. My limber had turned to old timber. Skinny? Not going there. And as far as contortion was concerned, words were the only thing that I could easily meld and bend.
(to be continued...after I Ben-Gay the joints)
Seperating the wheat from the chaffe here.
If you see this diagram
and then this visual below...and your heartbeat doesn't accelerate to the point where your tongue is throbbing and beating out drum beats on the roof of your mouth such that your sounds are emanating to distant villages announcing a pig roast at the family hut tonight, don't bother reading on. You have the cold, calculating heart of an engineer and the point of this post will be lost on you. That, or you may simply consider this the ravings of a technologically obtuse bonehead.
.Now, if you look at these two diagrams and consider them to be basically different versions of the same dilemna, let me welcome you to the fine world of DIY car stereo installation.
One long weekend ago, when Spring's weather had finally arrived and while neighbours were busy creating their own cacophonous odes to the peace and quiet of home ownership, I'd elected to solve a small problem in my car. It was a problem that was slowly turning into the long lost novel by Philip K. Dick, perhaps the follow-up to his “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”.
The original factory Toyota cd player / tape deck / martini shaker had started to take on a soul, a mind of its own. A year ago, perhaps once or twice a month, it refused to play some of the cd’s that sounded fine in the home unit. Then, as the year passed along, its selectivity and rejection phase juggernauted to where it considered most of my jazz cd’s of the Passe Blasé school and some of the blues cd’s as too depressing for it to listen to. If the cd player wasn’t shooting the cds out, it was skipping back and forth so that songs sounded as if the notes were on a trampoline.
A friend once illustrated the level of acceptance that a human being will come to with a story of home repairs.
There was some problem with one of his walls. It was a sheet-rocked wall, in front of which was his tv set. A blemish, perhaps. Maybe a screw that had popped out a millimeter or two.
You know where this is going, don’t you?
Repairing this mote of an error started with removing the screw, re-drilling a new one…well…mis-drilling that new one. Now, there’s a new hole next to the original screw hole. To correctly fix the new hole, it had to be widened so a patch could be inserted. And, then to do a professional job…. Well, later that day, the hole is now about 8 x 5 inches. He is exasperated. A ball game is on. He sits, beer in one hand, clicker in the other, tools strewn like spent cartridges around the set.
The hole was quite apparent; it sat like a fat shining moon right over the tv set. A day or two passed. And then a week. The hole was still there, unchanged in size. Yet, it wasn’t as visible. A month passed and it disappeared. Well, it didn’t appear in his view. Friends came over and remarked on the hole. They came over a few more times and soon that hole disappeared for them as well.
The cd player was my hole. The skipping was annoying at first and then it became the fabric of my daily commute. I used to drive to work alone. I now commuted with a thing with different musical tastes. The rejection of my choices was becoming less and less frustrating. The only time it seemed to matter was when a new body drove with me. Luckily for them and for me, these new folks didn’t drive often enough to be taken in completely by my cd android’s self-actualizing. This ultimately saved me from the fate that was certain to happen; I would start talking like my android, words skipping from front to back, punctuation totally abolished, and intonation having a complete disconnect from intention.
The ever-loving wife, not as likely to be taken in by androids or the inevitability of a “Blade Runner” world, decided that further mental disintegration on her husband’s part was not in her best interest. It was hard enough understanding my pithy obtuseness without having to deal with sentences constructed in the haphazard stylings of a Pollock. A gift certificate to Crutchfield was in order.
Memories of summers long ago spent on my back in the trunk of a car, on my back under the steering wheel, on my back under the glove compartment came in waves. I was young, I was limber, I was skinny, I had the contortive abilities of Harry Houdini. Ah, sweet youth!
The ordered cd player/stereo/tuner unit arrived. In three days! With sweaty paws, I ripped through the shrink wrap, suffering my first cut of many to come. Changing to stereo work clothes, loose paint-splattered jeans, a t-shirt of Great Grubbiness (guaranteed to keep spectators and skunks at least 10 feet away), and shoes of indeterminate brand, I dragged the necessary tools and the refit kit that came with the stereo out to the car. Carefully laying out the tools, like a surgeon about to take on heart surgery, I prepared the work area.
The work could now begin.
Putting my head down by the brake pedal, I threw my legs up on the head-rest of the driver’s seat.
A light twinge by the neck. Ouch!
A throbbing of the leg muscle and then that old sciatic nerve seizure.
I’d forgotten.
I wasn’t young. My limber had turned to old timber. Skinny? Not going there. And as far as contortion was concerned, words were the only thing that I could easily meld and bend.
(to be continued...after I Ben-Gay the joints)
Comments:
<< Home Verging on Pertinence Just some more disposable thoughts clogging up the hinterlands
Toyotas are the worst! Some 20+ years ago, when I could convince my friends to engage in such foolishness, I "helped" one such victim install a stereo in his Toyota. We started after school, and by midnight the entire dashboard had been disassembled - the car was nothing but a set of wheels, a pair of seats, and a steering wheel. We managed to get everything more or less where it belonged by dawn's early light, waking up his parents to the soothing strains of Foreigner or Def Leppard. No, you won't catch me "doing it myself" with a Toyota after that!
Mr. Tunes : I blush, but my sights were set higher than The New Yorker with this entry. Popular Mechanics was my goal.
Mr. WP: I agree that Toyotas are tough going as far as speaker installation is concerned. I tried it once and ended up leaving the old ones in for fear that I'd have to take off the rear windshield to get to the diabolically hidden wiring. However, I've had 2 Camrys and installed a new receiver in each. The receivers were relatively easy to install. Plus, Camrys seem to run forever...or at least 3-4 years after they've been paid off.
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Mr. WP: I agree that Toyotas are tough going as far as speaker installation is concerned. I tried it once and ended up leaving the old ones in for fear that I'd have to take off the rear windshield to get to the diabolically hidden wiring. However, I've had 2 Camrys and installed a new receiver in each. The receivers were relatively easy to install. Plus, Camrys seem to run forever...or at least 3-4 years after they've been paid off.
<< Home Verging on Pertinence Just some more disposable thoughts clogging up the hinterlands
