Hi there. Welcome back. It’s been a good while since I’ve posted an update. I haven’t been in a good place for a while now. Last year was difficult, and while there’s no guarantee the next will be any better, I feel better equipped to deal with it. The financial issues are easing a little bit, the medical ones are no worse, and I’m going to try something new to reduce the anxiety I generate: No more arguing on social media.
I’ve always known online arguments were unhealthy, but I am an absolute sucker for them. It’s worse now, at least for me. There’s a lot of tactical speech out there of the “this is hyperbole or it isn’t true, but it will provoke a reaction and get noticed” sort. I don’t do well with that, especially from people I largely agree with. So, I engage, which does nothing but raise my blood pressure and make me impotently angry.
It came to a head the other day when I was involved with a discussion and the original poster wildly disagreed with my point of view. They made some good points and I was starting to come around to their way of thinking when they blocked me. I won’t go into the details, but it clarified for me just how dumb the whole exercise is. I’m not going to convince anyone and they’re unlikely to convince me. Even if they do so, I’ll get blocked anyway.
A good number of my more reasonable friends already practice this and I imagine they’re metaphorically shaking their heads at me right now. That’s fair. It’s not like I didn’t already know and hadn’t been reminded multiple times that this wasn’t a great use of my energy.
From a practical standpoint, it means I’ll be using the mute and block buttons a lot more. If something raises my hackles and makes me want to engage, then I need to ignore it and if I keep seeing it, I need to make sure I don’t. I was about to say “In the past, I’ve only blocked for egregious behavior,” but that’s not true. I’ve blocked a lot of well-known accounts for exactly this reason. I’m just doing the same thing, only more so.
That all sounds negative, but it isn’t negative at all. Just thinking about doing it is liberating. I’ve blocked more accounts today than I have in the previous ten years combined. I guess this is “self-care.” I’ve been so withdrawn trying to get through the end of the year that I haven’t been paying that bill, and that bill is long overdue.
Fortunately, the company I work for offers sabbaticals after working X number of years. My span of employment is X+several, so it’s time. I’ve booked time off this spring. I’m not certain what we’ll be doing as we have a cat that requires regular treatment, but I have some ideas. What I don’t want to do is get caught in the “I’ll do this thing I want to do as soon as I have time” trap. I have a lot of things I want to do and I’d rather start them now rather than wait for my extended break.
Yes, I realize I’m being vague about a lot of things here. I’m a proud LiveJournal alumnus.
On that note, I did something that brought me joy on Saturday and I want to brag a little bit. I am a synthesizer nerd and my favorite piece of hardware has always been the Korg DW-8000. I’ve owned several, having had to sell them for rent or bills. I noticed that the one I have now had a problem: The digital delay wasn’t working. I had no idea what might cause that and was planning on taking it to Switched On to get it fixed.
Being the nerd that I am, I’m also in a Facebook group dedicated to this synth. Last week, someone mentioned having the same issue and several folks popped up to say that it was probably a bad delay board. I had assumed that this functionality was just built into the main circuitry; it never occurred to me that it might be a separate circuit board.
As luck would have it, I live down the road from one of the premier parts suppliers for vintage synthesizers. Syntaur happened to have the delay card in stock, so I snapped it up. I wasn’t planning to perform the replacement myself. I was still going to take it up to Austin, but we didn’t feel like making the drive on Saturday.
Instead, we came home and I opened the DW-8000 up to see what the replacement would entail. I said “I opened the DW-8000” up like it was no big deal. I had to remove 19 screws to get the top off, and that’s only because some were missing. Once I had it open, I recognized the location of the delay card and my heart sank a bit. It was attached between the top of the synth and the keys. I wouldn’t be able to replace it without removing the keys, something I hadn’t planned on doing. But…it looked like it might just be within my ability, so why not?
It wasn’t the easiest task I’ve ever had to do, but I did manage it. Once I removed the four screws holding the delay board to the lid, there were three ribbon cables to be carefully disconnected. I was halfway there, but it was the easy half. Connecting the cables to the board and screwing it back to the lid wasn’t difficult. Getting the keys back in place was. That took a good half hour of getting everything aligned just right so I could screw everything back together, get the grounds reconnected, and so forth.
At this point, I placed the lid back on and was about to reattach it when I came to my senses. Instead, I attached headphones and a power cable and fired it up. It came up without error, and all the buttons worked, but when I played it, no sound was produced. Just to make sure the problem wasn’t with the headphone jack, I attached it to an amplifier and got the same result.
Uh oh.
I opened it back up and saw that I had failed to reattach two of the ribbon cables from the circuit board to the keys. I reattached them, put the lid back on, and tested it again. Not only was there sound, but the delay was working. All of the delay settings could be changed, and those changes affected the output. Holy smokes, I did it. After that, it was just a matter of putting the 19 screws back in, presumably in the correct places, and we were done.
I understand that, for people with experience repairing electronics, what I did would barely cross the threshold of being a “repair.” Doing it gives me more respect for the folks who can perform the real repairs as this was harrowing enough. I’d never tried anything of this sort and so, to me, this was a big victory. It’s also a reminder that it can be rewarding to try things you aren’t sure you can do. What’s the worst that could happen? In this case, it would be “ruin an expensive 40-year-old musical instrument.” Those are higher stakes than I meant to use for my example. Pretend I said “waste a couple of hours learning something new.” That’s way more inspirational.
Today would have been my father’s 84th birthday. I miss him. We didn’t agree on much, but we disagreed respectfully (most of the time).
OK, that’s enough for tonight. I’ve shoehorned two full posts together in about as awkward a fashion as I can imagine. My SEO person will be furious. Or would be, if I had one. Goodnight, and I hope y’all have a lovely 2024.
-RK
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