Tuesday,
January 7, 2003
Snurfle
Yup, I think I have indeed caught the local version of the plague, courtesy of nursing Lyndon through it this weekend (which is okay -- as I reminded him, I did say, "In sickness and in health" 9+ years ago). I felt like utter shit this morning -- my head and body hurt, my nose was running like a tap, and I almost fell over when I stood up. So I took the day off to sleep and try to give my immune system a chance to hunt down and kill the little microbial bastards. By the way, Alleve is now my good buddy.
On the other hand, when I woke up this afternoon and felt semi-human, I finally got a chance to hook up the RF Converter to the TV in the bedroom and attach the DVD player. It works like a charm, and the picture degredation really isn't noticeable (it's not like this is a fabulous TV to begin with, anyway), so we can now watch movies while sprawled in bed. Oh, and remember that little problem I was having with my camcorder, how the tape wouldn't run and I'd get a C:31:23 error message? I did some research on the web, and discovered that the :23 part of the message meant that one of the spindles was having a problem with tape uptake, which usually meant that the capstan was gummed up and needed to be cleaned.
Since this camera had been owned by a smoker (you don't even want to know what the bag smelled like -- thank Cthulhu for Febreeze and the vinegar trick, that's all I have to say), I figured that the inside was probably filthy, and I wasn't wrong. I stopped off at Radio Shack yesterday to pick up some tape head cleaner and foam-tipped swabs, and today I took off the camcorder cassette door to get at the innards with cleaner and swabs.
Oh. My. God. You would not believe the amount of crap that came off the capstan -- I had to wonder if the previous owner was just gobbing in the camera or what. So I cleaned it, carefully cleaned off all the spindles for good measure, then put the door back on and popped in a tape. Poof -- it ran like a charm, recorded and played back without a problem, and all was right with the world.
I suspect that the seller knew full well about this problem, and was hoping that whoever bought the camera would just take it to a dealer to have it fixed. Nuts to you, Smoking Man -- I don't take technical problems lying down. I fix the mothers.
So y'all can expect
lovingly crafted QuickTime movies of the cats Real Soon Now. I knew you'd like
that.