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Keep the receipt

By G.D. Maxwell I pretty much gave up trying to understand electronics around the time soldering irons became extinct. Yeah, yeah, I know, soldering irons are still around and still have uses. So am I.

By G.D. Maxwell

I pretty much gave up trying to understand electronics around the time soldering irons became extinct. Yeah, yeah, I know, soldering irons are still around and still have uses. So am I. But neither of us are as useful as we once might have been.

Take a soldering iron to the guts of any malfunctioning electronic device – assuming (1) you can even begin to figure out how to get inside its infuriating, seamless plastic shell and (2) exactly what the guts look like once you’ve broken the plastic to reach them – and you will, more likely than not, accomplish exactly what you set out to do... destroy what ever the thing used to be so thoroughly you’ll be completely justified in going out and buying a new, modern, updated one. After all, the one you just destroyed was at least 18 months old. Chances are good the only reason soldering irons are even sold any more is because they are the perfect tool with which to apply the final death blow to something you’re just itching to replace.

I have been unfortunate enough in my life to accidentally buy several crucial electronic appliances that were surprisingly well put together. Try as I might – and we’re talking about adding a hammer to the task force led by a hot soldering iron – they won’t die and refuse even to be killed by anything less dramatic than a fall from an open window. When you live in a basement suite, that’s not much of a fall.

For example, I have a hulking, geriatric Pioneer stereo receiver/amplifier/food processor still seeing service after several close encounters with a soldering iron. It continues to suffer all the maladies for which I assaulted it with a soldering iron – and sports a couple of interesting burn patterns where, logic having failed, I resorted to torture – but it stubbornly works just enough to make replacing it an irresponsible act of frivolity. I mean, how important is it if the "receiver" module doesn’t actually receive anything when you live in a town with next to nothing to receive? There is a small, portable radio nearby with its own interesting history of attempted repairs that pulls in CBC One which, according to a deal worked out with the CRTC, isn’t allowed to broadcast anything even remotely requiring "hi-fidelity" or stereo capability, so what does it matter?

Perched atop the amplifier/non-receiver is a portable CD player. It could be considered a great-great-great grandmother of today’s portable CD players since it (a) plays CDs, more or less; and (b) can be carried from place to place… carefully. New portable CD players are marvels of technology. They can be slipped into cargo pockets of droopy boarder pants and play perfectly while their wearers perform 1080 methods, Misty 7s, and Skodeos and keep playing while Patrol perform intubations, CPR and compound fracture reductions after their owners screw up the landing.

My portable CD player, on the other hand, cannot so much as be looked at harshly, less it skip, repeat, and start making clicking sounds not unlike a plague of locusts descending on a Mormon corn field. Encased in enough open-cell foam to make a mattress, it will play CDs through Mello Yello’s awesome travelin’ stereo system so long as I take certain precautions. These include never driving on any road rougher than an Interstate Highway and/or not actually driving at all. Yet, it won’t die and its seamless plastic case defies penetration by anything short of a cutting torch.

All of this illustrates the obvious: I am not what the marketers call an Early Adopter. This means I will never be the first guy on my block to own anything. As if to prove the obvious, any time I even try to throw off the shackles of obsolete technology and plunge into the Brave New World, I regret it.

So it was with my latest adventure on technology’s cutting edge.

I love interviewing people. I hate transcribing interviews. Truth be known, the tape recorder I carry around is mostly for show. I ask questions, record answers, listen for the general gist of the conversation, then write whatever story I think I’ve heard and make up appropriate quotes, mostly from memory. My theory is I never remember what I say, why should anyone else. Fair enough. Like I’ve told you over and over, I’m not a journalist. If you think anything different, it’s your own fault.

Hoping against hope there must be a better way, I broke down a couple of weeks ago and, against my better judgement, spent an obscene amount of money for what I hoped would be a technological fix. The hardware was sleek and elegant, a brushed aluminum digital voice recorder about the size of a breadstick. The theory was equally elegant: digitally record an interview; suck it into the computer via the USB – whatever the heck that is – port; let the software that came with the breadstick massage the interview into a file; transfer the file to more software also included with the breadstick that recognizes voice and converts it to text. Voila! CONVERTS IT TO TEXT?

What more could a hack writer ask for? Instant transcription. I was already spending the money I was going to make doing interview after interview with really important people while I loaded the software into the computer. Feeling almost historical, I borrowed a page from history and spoke these words as a test of the software’s transcription ability: "Watson! Come here. I need you."

This is what came out: "Klatu! Barada! Nicto!" Or words to that effect.

Reading further, I found out the voice recognition software needed to be "trained" to understand my voice. I tried something easier but no less historical. "Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow."

The machine heard, "Mary had a little and police was why its go."

Close, but no cigar. I experimented further.

"Open the pod bay door, HAL."

"Opened upon the doors how."

"Open the pod bay door, HAL."

"Old and the upon the co-workers how all."

"O-PEN THE POD BAY DOOR, HAL!"

"(1 the pond they co-workers how."

"HAL! OPEN THE POD BAY DOOR!!!"

"Hal opened upon the doors."

"OPEN THE P-O-D B-A-Y DOOR, HAL!!!"

"Opened (() pond pond POD AE AE die why be a why door Hal."

Then I got frustrated, blew the explosive bolts, reached for the soldering iron, settled for a stiff belt, packed it all up and went back to the Sony store in Vancouver where they guy who sold me the breadstick is still laughing after having read the printed-out transcription of my attempt to train the machine.

No wonder we never made it to Jupiter.