QUOTE
I knew where I "was" and where I was "going"!
Where have I heard those words, before...
... Oh, yeah, the first interview with "Wrong Way Corrigan!"
"When at first you don't succeed......change your definition..."
However, I know your pain. Wednesday night, the tip of a 1/4" jack broke off in the socket on our sound board. It was not really an big problem, only thing that was used for was to 'dial in' a microphone to a particular voice while keeping the sound out of any speakers (the tinkering of the knobs can make a very distracting sound out of a human voice!
). I didn't have time until Thursday afternoon to start working on a fix. My local audio support tech said I could probably
unsolder the jack and find one in another part of the board that we didn't use to replace it. Let's just say that the process of gaining access to the particular circuit board was sightly more difficult than disassembling the Discovery spacecraft. Five different sizes of ~50 screws, disconnecting ~dozen tiny connectors and rigging up two small vice grips to hold the one inch square board holding the jack.
Upon removing the jack, the broken tip fell out. Great! No need to scavenge another part of the mixer, we'll just solder that sucker right back! Mission accomplished, almost. Upon turning the system back on, everything was fine (all four separate monitor speaker systems worked as expected) except for one, little, only slightly noticeable problem: the main speaker system (for the "house" [congregation]) when from normal volume to half volume and back and forth continuously. Quickly determining that this was probably not going to be acceptable, I immediately began a search for a new church to join!!!
However, Judy, my wife, said that was like blaming Microsoft for my problems. Of course, I asked her what was wrong with
that! Finding no humor in my response, her "evil eye" convinced me to seek a different solution. Another call to my local tech suggested that the internal parts of female jack may have been damaged when the male bart broke. (Relax, this will remain a family oriented story!) Easy solution was to simply snip the three 32 gauge wires to completely remove the jack!
Unfortunately, nothing actually changed, and, with the hour growing late, I decided to pack up and pursue the final solution (sorry about that!) Saturday. So, I gathered up some of my stuff, holding my half full, capped coffee mug in one hand, along with several other items, bent over a couple of times picking up more stuff as I walked along the ten foot counter. You know where this is going by now, with that glaring tidbit...yep, I spilled coffee (pleasantly including hazelnut creamer to disguise the taste) all along the floor and one chair! 30 minutes later, I had the floor dry enough to walk on and left.
Guess what I discovered Saturday morning? Several slightly 'coffee-colored' areas on the mixer edge. I don't know, yet, if my $3,000 income tax refund will be enough to pay for my stupidity, But we
will have a fixed/rented/new mixer by next Wednesday! The little emergency board that we used when the church formed some 10+ years ago is completely un-suitable for the sound system we now have, and it was never designed to use the "monstrosity" as I did today. Naturally,
THE day
everyone comes to church, somewhere...
So, that's actually the last place I heard the phrase, "I knew where I 'was' and where I was 'going'!"
Believe me, I never plan on going there again!!!
