Oh, now I remember...I hate soldering...
Today I remembered how much I hate soldering.
It's kind of like U-Haul. Everytime I have used U-haul, it's been a giant pain in the ass and a really bad experience overall. Examples? Well, how about things like:
--Sorry, your truck won't be back until 12:30 (when I have friends and family lined up for 10:00).
--Sorry, we don't have the one-way 14 footer you reserved three weeks ago, but we'll give you this 26 foot behemoth and you have to have it back here by 4:30. (That was a lot of gas money and everything slid around the truck. Yeah, I know, learn to tie a knot.)
--Did you reserve the truck on line? We don't have any record of it.
But by the time it comes time to move again, I always forget how awful it was the last time.
But last time, I remembered. So last time, we went with a local moving company. It was no better. Quite a bit worse, actually. On our second trip, the thing started smoking very badly and broke down. And there was no cell service. And I had to walk about a half mile to get one bar. And nobody answered at the rental place. And I called the service number in the truck and it turns out that service number was for Ryder, the company this company bought the truck from. And they wouldn't help. And I called AAA, normally a fountain of assistance in bad situations like this, and they wouldn't tow it because I'm n ot the owner of the truck.
So half of our wordly posessions and all of our plants spent the night at the intersection of Calistoga Road and Petrified Forst Road with a mere padlock to secure them. Fortunately everything was there.
The company sent out another truck on Monday. And my parents and Mike and Angela came to the rescue and helped us shlep everything from one truck to the other.
Fortunately, we don't intend to move any time soon, if ever.
Oh, sorry, I digressed.
Soldering.
I hate soldering. And I always forget how much I hate it. And then something comes along that needs soldering and I think, "Oh, I'll just solder that real quick and it'll be good as new."
"Soderstrom" is NOT Swedish for "master solderer."
I've learned that you need three hands to solder. Four would be ideal. And I'm not going to ask Rachel or Jake to help for fear of burning them. And try as I might, my fingers are not nimble enough to thread multiple wires through tiny little holes, hold them steady, apply heat and solder and keep it all together pretty. It looks so easy when geeks are doing it on TV shows. And then there's the smell. I try really hard not to breathe the stuff. And then my hands start shaking. And I turn my head to breathe and invariably smell the stuff and then I look back and find the wire has fused to the wrong part of whatever it is I am soldering.
It just sucks. But I think I've done a good enough job. I am getting music through one speaker. And I am confident that I will get music through the other once I conenct the wire. And everything will be groovy and we will once again have music in the living room.
And six months from now, something else will need soldering and I will forget how much I hate it. Maybe I will even forget that I blogged about this and blog about it again.
Wait, did I already do a post on soldering?
It's kind of like U-Haul. Everytime I have used U-haul, it's been a giant pain in the ass and a really bad experience overall. Examples? Well, how about things like:
--Sorry, your truck won't be back until 12:30 (when I have friends and family lined up for 10:00).
--Sorry, we don't have the one-way 14 footer you reserved three weeks ago, but we'll give you this 26 foot behemoth and you have to have it back here by 4:30. (That was a lot of gas money and everything slid around the truck. Yeah, I know, learn to tie a knot.)
--Did you reserve the truck on line? We don't have any record of it.
But by the time it comes time to move again, I always forget how awful it was the last time.
But last time, I remembered. So last time, we went with a local moving company. It was no better. Quite a bit worse, actually. On our second trip, the thing started smoking very badly and broke down. And there was no cell service. And I had to walk about a half mile to get one bar. And nobody answered at the rental place. And I called the service number in the truck and it turns out that service number was for Ryder, the company this company bought the truck from. And they wouldn't help. And I called AAA, normally a fountain of assistance in bad situations like this, and they wouldn't tow it because I'm n ot the owner of the truck.
So half of our wordly posessions and all of our plants spent the night at the intersection of Calistoga Road and Petrified Forst Road with a mere padlock to secure them. Fortunately everything was there.
The company sent out another truck on Monday. And my parents and Mike and Angela came to the rescue and helped us shlep everything from one truck to the other.
Fortunately, we don't intend to move any time soon, if ever.
Oh, sorry, I digressed.
Soldering.
I hate soldering. And I always forget how much I hate it. And then something comes along that needs soldering and I think, "Oh, I'll just solder that real quick and it'll be good as new."
"Soderstrom" is NOT Swedish for "master solderer."
I've learned that you need three hands to solder. Four would be ideal. And I'm not going to ask Rachel or Jake to help for fear of burning them. And try as I might, my fingers are not nimble enough to thread multiple wires through tiny little holes, hold them steady, apply heat and solder and keep it all together pretty. It looks so easy when geeks are doing it on TV shows. And then there's the smell. I try really hard not to breathe the stuff. And then my hands start shaking. And I turn my head to breathe and invariably smell the stuff and then I look back and find the wire has fused to the wrong part of whatever it is I am soldering.
It just sucks. But I think I've done a good enough job. I am getting music through one speaker. And I am confident that I will get music through the other once I conenct the wire. And everything will be groovy and we will once again have music in the living room.
And six months from now, something else will need soldering and I will forget how much I hate it. Maybe I will even forget that I blogged about this and blog about it again.
Wait, did I already do a post on soldering?
posted by Eric Soderstrom at 4:45 PM
1 Comments:
That's a pretty big soldering gun for a couple of speaker wires. Do you have a smaller iron? Could be easier . . .
Also, tin the wires separately first, and apply solder to the heated wire, not the iron.
And don't try to sweat copper pipes, whatever you do.
Next time you solder, let me advise by video. Hey, it works for heart transplants, right?
-Scott
Post a Comment
<< Home