Upstairs in the electronics bay, where I’ve been happily spending more and more time, I decided that the thing to do to make it more studio-like, rather than submerged rabbit warren-like, was to put fun things in there, like music and a hidden bag of reward chips. Make it easy to plop down in a chair without fussing with — oh, forgot my power cable, or..oh..no network cables, or..oh..IT hasn’t put any network up here at all..that won’t do. How will I listen to my Rdio or check a specification sheet, or order some parts right as you realize you’ve run out.
Anyway — so..we went to the local crapshoot Fry’s shop down the road and I got a big box that looked like it had speakers in it, which it did. Happy to report that there is now music up here. And, shocked to find this enormously ridiculous cable/connector that tethers one of the left/right channel speakers to the woob-woob bass box speaker. It’s properly a VGA style connector, I’m pretty sure. And it’s big, heavy, reticent, snaky, uncharming and — even if all those signals are doing something — ridiculously much and ridiculously overengineered. I’m sure someone got a good deal on them in a bulk quantity of 150,000 for the run of yet *another quite mediocre PC/gaming audio speaker set. And it works fine.
Many things work fine without any attention to the details of the way they convey themselves in the world. This is like the wobbly-squeaky wheel on the hotel valets cart. The cart does it’s job without complaint and does a fine job, it does. But that squeaky-wobbly wheel sure is a distraction. Makes you wonder when someone will sort it out.
Why do I blog this? Seeing such an over-engineered bit makes me wonder how it even got approved. Or is it one of those things where the engineering (this looks like engineering in the instrumental sense) met the requirements of the specification with minimal cost, minimal finesse and the least amount of hassle. Looks like vendor work rather than someone committed to doing the best they can.