For the past week, Didgeridoo Boy and I have been back into overdrive with regards to working on our house. We've moved furniture, upgraded our electronics, moved more furniture, and have generally made a huge mess of things in the process. So now I'm working on cleaning all of that back up. Didgeridoo Boy? He's tweaking his new stuff.
And that tweaking damned near resulted in something bad. As I was prepping dinner on Saturday, Didge was trying to remedy a strange situation with a turntable he's working into his stereo system. While we had a turntable on hand, Didge decided to recover the one he'd left at a friend's house. The friend took the needle off for some reason, and offered a replacement that he said "should" work. I could probably stop here, because you can probably imagine what kinds of things wound up happening. But that wouldn't be as much fun, would it?
He had me pop the replacement needle on - my hands are smaller than Didge's, and I have an easier time of such things. What should have worked did not. For a couple of hours, almost all I heard was speakers humming, very muffled music coming from the turntable, and Didgeridoo Boy swearing. This was interspersed with the sounds of a turntable being taken apart time and time again - he was checking the belt, fiddling with some kind of switch, checking the needle's placement. He called a friend. I heard the words, "What kind of wire would I need? Yeah, I think that's it, man, I need to ground it." I tried to make myself look smaller, as I didn't want to be noticed and dragged into something with that kind of potential. Luckily I had dinner to look busy with.
He called me in once, and I pulled the dingbat ruse. I was told to stand in a particular spot while he tried to play a record. He asked me how it sounded. I told him it sounded like crap. He told me to stay put. I said, "You've got a really bad humming." He stopped everything, turned around, and asked, "Oh. Ya think, Einstein?" I answered that I thought he liked for me to tell him everything, and he sent me back to the kitchen. Victory feels nice, no?
I'm amazed at how busy I can make myself look stirring chili and whipping up cornbread. Hearing Didge swear again, I peeked into the living room to see him disassembling the turntable on its shelf; he was standing over it with wires in both hands. And then I head what can only be described as a loud, humming pop. It was like an explosion of hum. I didn't ask, and I damned well wasn't about to look.
"Whoa. I hope you didn't see that." I stopped pretending to be a chef. "What the hell happened?", I asked. He wouldn't tell me. Told me to keep cooking, that he was going to try to call someone else.
I overheard him telling the friend he called that there had been sparks. After trying a few more things, he finally settled down and decided to give the matter a think. He went back to thinking he needed to ground it, resulting in my keen desire for a soothing cocktail and a trip someplace calm and tropical.
He slept on the issue, and started working on it again yesterday afternoon. After only about five minutes, it worked - good, this, because I was starting to worry like mad over what might happen. And what was the issue?
The needle. The needle that I put on crooked.
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