Build it and it will break - On me…

Nick (the dog) examines the missing radio, and wonders why the top of the dash is missing.

You know about the problem with the van, but what I have not told you is that I also have some other electronics that have decided that it is time to check out of this world. Luckily they are still under warranty, at least for the next 5 days.

As it turns out, I have a knack for picking out electronics that will give up at or right around the time the warranty expires. Just last week my laptop decided to mysteriously just shut down and not start again. It didn’t matter what I would do, it would not start. All I was getting was an amber flashing power indicator on the front of the laptop. I eventually removed and replaced the battery just to see what would happen, and low and behold it fired right up. Being the nervous type that I am, I decided that a call to the laptop customer service number was in order. I gave them a call and explained the situation, along with the steps that I took to remedy the situation. They seemed genuinely worried about the laptop blowing up at any second. They said that they were “very concerned” about the situation, and advised me to take it into an authorized service center if it happened again.

Now I don’t know about you, but I have this sneaking suspicion that my computer is going to be just fine until the day after the warrantee expires, at which point it will spontaneously combust. This will be nothing unusual for me. It seems that whenever I purchase something of any complexity, the life span is determined by the warrantee. Now I could have taken out an extended warrantee, but for that price I could probably buy a new laptop in 3 years. That and the fact that I very rarely have a computer around for three years. Well, actually that is not the truth. I did keep parts of my old 486DX 50 for about 10 years, although they were just parts, and I doubt that they would ever work again.

Enough about the broken alarm and computer. Lets move on to the broken car stereo. Oh, yea! Once again, before we left Florida I had a car stereo installed so that we could listen to some snappy tunes on our way to the great white north. What we found out was that the FM receiver only picks up stations where there are people and civilization. Seeing that we were mostly traveling in the middle of nowhere, we usually had to rely on the cd player. Actually we only had one cd that I had burned and we must have listened to it about 458,043,20,954.376 times. I am actually thinking about copying it and sending it to all my relatives for Christmas. That is how close I am to this cd.

In any case, about a month ago I realized that the radio was not playing. I figured this out when I turned it on and no sound came out ( I’m quick like that…). Everything else seemed to be working just fine, but it just didn’t want to be heard. I am not sure if it was broken, or just sick of hearing the same cd a zillion times. I tried the radio - Nothing. I tried turning up the volume - Nothing. I tried threatening it - Nothing. I tried begging - Still nothing. I gave up. I figured that by the time I removed it and had it repaired, the warrantee would be over. I was wrong.

Today I checked the warrantee information and as it turns out, my particular brand was covered for 2 years, not the typical 1. Apparently the radio had some bad information and thought that it should break down at about 1 year instead of 2. So now I have to remove the radio, take it to the authorized “radio fixer”, and have them tell me that it is not fixable. At that point I will have to wait probably another 2 weeks for a replacement. Now knowing that this radio is no longer made, I have a really strong suspicion that I will be getting a new(er) model - hopefully. At that point all I have to do is pay to have the radio re-installed, and wait for the warrantee to expire again. Oh, the joys of being a technophile!!!!