yes, quite. this title may well be incorrect, look you see. so my apologies for anyone what "done a google" and came here expecting to find the details of a somewhat peculiar trend that is, so to speak, happening in the USA, or if you like Stateside.
we will have a gander at that tantalising concept referenced above, but the business end of this is an actual cable being slain, or indeed killed, to be sure. if you happen to be of a mind to see cables as some form of living creature which can have their existence ceased to be. rendered beyond all practical use is perhaps the best description, or maybe fubar, but "slayer" and "killer" are much more snappy, catchy, perhaps snazzy words.
should you be in a rush and want a quick overview, i recently broke a quite important cable, experienced some interest in getting a new one, cursed my own stupidity, replaced it. there's some rather curious "as an aside" comments below too, so it might be worth reading but as i said if you are in a rush there's the story and good luck with what you need to get done.
for everyone else, then, let's have a look at what has been on my mind so much that i feel compelled to scribe once more.
if that there above looks to you very much like the bottom, business end of a vacuum cleaner that would be because it very much is precisely that. note the precision blades of brushes. in untrained and unqualified hands, such as mine, these can prove to be rather lethal for any cables or wires you run them over.
as is my way i was doing a touch of housework recently. one of the key considerations of this was doing a spot of hoovering as it is colloquially called under the rules of the English way of doing things, although that means referencing a specific brand. one can only extract so much joy and pleasure from the task of vacuum cleaning, and so every now and then one elects to take a shortcut, to be sure.
of the many such shortcuts one could follow in operating a vacuum cleaning the idea of not moving some cables out of the way is of relevance. i could see the cable for the power unit for a netbook i use for time to time in the way on the floor. my mind was torn. do i stop and move it, or do i, as i was sure i had done before and would do again, just give it a little nudge out of the way with the vacuum cleaner. the latter was selected, so as not to disrupt my rhythm or momentum.
above you can see the glory of what happened as a consequence of my elected approach. the vacuum cleaner in a quite ruthless manner did not nudge the cable out the way. no, instead it sucked it up and chewed upon it, feasting until its appetite was sate. when it was satisfied that it had slain the cable and digested the parts it so wished this was all that was left.
bugger, i said. oh dear, maybe. well, no. there were quite a few words of a cursive nature i uttered after i had done this. foul, filthy words that i dare not repeat here. all of them were directed on an inner level, as i castigated and berated myself for my own stupidity or sheer laziness.
we have all done similar to this, have we not? in our minds we can "see" the folly of doing something in a certain way, and yet we go right ahead and do it anyway. in this instance, at the least, not too much significant damage was done. the vacuum remains fine and i was simply left bereft of use of that computing device for some twenty four or so hours. i appreciate the damage could have been far greater, in particular if the cable had been plugged in and "live" at the time of my crass laziness.
the quest for a new cable proved interesting and ultimately fruitful. indeed this is what the following text will look at, only not right away. first, this, for something of a pause or break.
if the above, to you, looks like an elastic band, an encased seed from a chestnut tree or if you like conker and two rock like stones one of which appears like a squished chocolate chip cookie, well then i have some news for you. they look like that for they as point of fact are an elastic band, an encased seed from a chestnut tree or if you like conker and two rock like stones one of which appears like a squished chocolate chip cookie. William gathered these items from the streets as we walked around recently, as opposed to them being items i would imagine that he gathered on a future stroll.
what's interesting is how these items represent our shared, perhaps common, future. that fully fledged conkers may be scooped from the streets during a particularly august of Augusts shows unequivocally that our nature and temperatures have been disrupted. as our world moves back - maybe reverts - to an isolationist, imperialist way then soon we will once more have penal colonies, where convicts shall be expected to break attractive rocks such as this for the amusement of the ruling classes.
the elastic band, however, is the most interesting. basically it's the entire basic model apparently in place for the post-Brexit British economy. the postal delivery faction of Royal Mail have taken to discarding these elastic bands as they wander around delivering the mail; something they do from time to time and when it so amuses to the correct address. the people walking the streets gratefully pick them up, meaning they do not need to purchase their own and saving some £1 a year. the prestigious elastic band industry survives by selling their wares to Royal Mail on an almost exclusive basis. Royal Mail funds elastic band investment by increasing postal prices (in a ratio equal to a decrease in service level), and the people can afford increased postal prices through the savings they make on not needing to purchase elastic bands.
you would like to think that our government is wasting no time at all in calculating how this ingenious, self-serving level of self-sufficiency may be achieved across all industries. to do so would save the economy and vindicate everything from referendums to elections. tally ho, fingers crossed.
above is something what i believe must take a fair portion, if not equal, of the blame for the disaster which struck the cable cord thingie on my computing device power pack. yes, my stupidity is the most visible aspect, true. i do not deny this. but the fact that our vacuum cleaner works at an insane warp speed level is a contributing factor. we recently, well when i say we i mean my (considerably) better half, replaced the drive shaft engineering function belt in the cleaner, after the original snapped. evidently we, as in i, inadvertently ordered a "turbo drive" one of them replacement belts, as it works harder and faster than when we first used it. the device now sucks so hard and visibly that i am tempted to christen the vacuum cleaner Sammy Hagar, or maybe Mr Kim Kardassian, or whatever his name is.
the thing about "cable killing" in the American sense? apparently the switch to digital broadcasts over across in the USA had an unexpected side effect. the people were not aware that it would still be able to get free to air TV via a digital aerial, with the assumption made that now you had to use cable services or digital streaming. thus, now there's a generation that believes they are beating the pay tv system by using a surprisingly legal aerial to get TV transmissions for free. nice one for them, and no of course this blog post isn't really about that sort of cable slaying.
so the replacement cable, or cord or more appropriately and correctly power pack. despite my computing device being somewhere north of 15 (!) years old, doing a quick google thing revealed that the power pack replacement units were relatively freely available. of delight was the fact that in most instances they were available for south of £10 in cost, with a significant number being even, if just slightly, south of £7 in cost. an order was placed, but of course i got impatient. i decided to see if the stores had one for sale so that i may use the device now, figuring the online order could be retained as a spare.
accepting, then, that physical store retail could be double the online order (overheads, etc, associated with a shop), off i went. eventually, as you can see in Commodore 64 mode, this worked out, but not so much at first.
i, or i should say we as i took the boys so that they may learn how much stupid decisions cost, with the lesson being held within the tears dropping from daddy's eyes as he bought the replacement, went around a couple of normal, sensible shops first to see if they had one. alas, no. they were apologetic and suggested i might want to order online. it was also that they, with a sigh, suggested that i visit the one store i wished to avoid. yes, Maplin.
Maplin has a staggering reputation for overpricing items. i am not sure how they survive in this day and age; perhaps people like me who prefer to buy in a store when we can are to blame. visiting shops really does keep the economy going, it keeps people employed, etc. but Maplin seem to take advantage of this. off i went, then, thinking at best it would be just three times the cost of online in their store. how foolish.
so we walked to Maplin, and i cautioned the boys not to say anything disparaging about the store once inside despite the fact that i had done nothing but that outside it. when inside i eventually found a store clerk hiding from customers. i asked him if they had what i wanted, he sort of said "yes". he presented me with a "multi lug" pack. none of them looked like they would fit my device, but he reckoned that i could force one in. when i enquired as to the price i was told, with a straight face, that it was £35. we left the store sans power pack.
thankfully a nearby family run business had the one above you can see pictured in Commodore 64 mode. it was the exact fitting i needed. the cost was a not unreasonable £16. and so i bought it.
what have we learned here? possibly that which is what you are aware of. basically, if your instinct is to move a wire before you run a vacuum cleaner over it, you should on the basis of my experiences then remove it from the way. it's cheaper.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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