Another "Give it Time" Repair

     I wrote about letting "broken" machines work their problems out for themselves in my last post. 

    I'll continue that theme with this Pioneer 6-Disc CD player that I found at the Johnston Goodwill.

The Pioneer turns 30 next year.

    

  It wasn't much of an investment at 10 bucks (I round up). The price tag mislabeled this as a DVD player, but that happens a lot if a member of Gen Z works in the back. This CD player was born before they were, and they might not have seen one before.

    I took the player to an outlet in the store to take it for a test drive. The eject functioned, and the 6-disc magazine popped right out. 

    The magazine was full of the previous owner's music (mostly pop-punk and a folk outlier*). I returned the magazine and watched as CD 1 disappeared into the player and the play counter started moving. It looked like we were good to go.

    I tried getting the Pioneer to move from CD 1 to CD 2 when we got home, but that was a bust. The results were the same for the other CD positions. The Pioneer would only play the first CD.

    Well, shoot. A multi-disc player isn't very useful if it only plays one disc. I considered removing the cover and cleaning the laser lens, but the Pioneer was reading CD 1 without a problem, so I didn't think a cleaning would do much. I was leaning towards taking the player back for a refund.

    Then I considered the CDs. There were six in the magazine. The Pioneer must have been able to play them all at some time in the past, and I seriously doubted the player was broken when it was put into storage.

    Of the six CDs, this one was the most recent. The aptly titled Resurrection from New Found Glory was released in 2014. This made me think that the player had probably only been sitting alone in a basement for a decade or less. I guessed he just needed to get off the couch and stretch his legs. 

    It was time to anthropomorphize the Pioneer and see if he could work out his own problems. I thought, You know what, buddy? You like playing your first CD so much, let's just let you do that for awhile. And that's what we did. I hit play, he loaded the CD, and I walked away. 

    He was done playing the CD fifty minutes later. Okay, friend, let's do it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then something happened during the fourth round. At the end of  last track, there was a new noise. It was the clicking of the CDs' trays as they were trading places. 

    He's playing CD 2! Yay!

    I gave him the afternoon to work it out, and he did. By the evening he had successfully played all 6 CDs in order. Nice work, my friend.

    Last night I filled the Pioneer with Xmas CDs, hit the "Random" button, and let him make me a mixtape. He jumped from track to track and tray to tray for an hour without a hitch. 

    

    A CD player's purpose is to entertain. I'm glad he gets to do that again. 

    

    *FYI: The other CDs left in the magazine were Gravity by Our Lady Peace, On the Impossible Past by The Menzingers, Only by the Night by Kings of Leon, White Crosses by Against Me!, and O.C.M.S. by Old Crow Medicine Show.

A "Give it Time" Repair

    Aaron Kaufman was one of the car builders on the reality TV show Fast N' Loud (cancelled in 2020). He said something during one episode that has really stuck with me. I cannot remember his exact words, but Aaron said something like, "There is a certain spirit in old cars that makes them want to run." 

    I really liked the idea that an old car has an inherent desire to do what it was built to do. 

    Now, to be clear, I don't think machines are alive or self-aware. But I do use this idea when I find something that appears to be broken. I anthropomorphize the object by mentally saying to it, How can I help you do what you were designed to do?

    I have learned over the years that sometimes I just have to give the machine a little time to work it out for themselves.

    Take this kitchen timer as an example.

    

    I used to use this at school to time student speeches. I've got a smart phone now, so I thought I'd take the timer home and use when I grill. It wasn't working when I took it out of my desk, but I blamed that on a dead battery.

  I popped in a new battery when I got home. No dice. The screen was still blank. I cleaned the contacts for the battery to no avail. Whacking the timer against the heel of my hand didn't help, either. I was considering grabbing a screwdriver when Daphne walked into the kitchen and asked me what I was doing.

    I explained what was going on, and added at the end, "I could just throw it away, but I think this guy really wants to work. I'm just going to leave the battery in and let it sit for awhile. She smiled and lightly shook her head at me. 

    I checked on Taylor the Timer an hour later. The screen was still blank, but there were signs of life when I spun the battery with my finger. The screen would flicker incoherently. Encouraged, I let him sit on the dining room table overnight.

    His screen was still blank in the morning. I picked him up and gave him a slight tap on his back with my finger. That was all he needed. 

   

    Daphne was walking our dog Ellie at the time. Char and I had to leave to get Char to jazz band rehearsal, so I left Taylor sitting proudly on our kitchen counter where Daphne was sure to see him. I got this text a few minutes later.

    Taylor worked flawlessly the two times we grilled together, and he was wide awake when I took these photos yesterday. 

    Sometimes the first step of a repair is to not use a tool at all.