Looks like I missed Thursday completely this week. I do have an excuse, though.

My email was down. No, really. It was down for a good three days, and that sucked a lot.

I suppose I could’ve posted something from one of my many spare spams, but… I couldn’t stand having Outlook open, because it’d keep doing this thing where it would demand [at gunpoint, even] that I give it my username and password, and then tell me all about how it absolutely must not be right, because there are errors.

I couldn’t check my email through the web-based thing, either, because there was some sort of great server fuckup somewhere. But, well, that’s all fixed now. Thank you, dreamhost, for only being mildly irritating occasionally.

While I wasn’t getting email, I managed to get a few things done.

Okay, well, one thing, really. I got a couple of those mail in rebates deposited into my account just before they became pretty pieces of security-enhanced paper instead of things that were worth $10. a piece.

I really am glad there’s a branch of my bank with an ATM that accepts deposits within walking distance, I just wish it was a little closer.

Also, I wish ATMs weren’t so horribly noisy.

See, with my bank, the ATM is actually inside the first set of doors. You get to use your little ATM card as a door key to get in at night, and use the ATM in a nice, roomy, dry, somewhat secure area. But that makes me feel a little weird when the ATM suddenly starts beeping at me as if I’ve done something horribly criminal, and I’m not sure what to do.

It wanted me to put in an envelope of some sorts, and I couldn’t find them because they were hidden on a lower flap in the fucking thing. I think it might’ve wanted me to write a name or a date or something on it, because there were places for that, but there wasn’t a pen anywhere in sight, and I wasn’t about to start really looking for one, because the thing was beeping loudly enough that the grocery store way across the lot could probably hear it, and I was beginning to wonder if there might be night security somewhere inside the bank just waiting to pounce on me.

Also, there was this cop that went flying by on the way to the bank that kept flipping his lights off and on. I think he was just doing that to beat the red light, though.

Anyway, it was all rather annoying, but almost 100% less annoying than having to deal with one of those human tellers they always seem to have around during the day. The ones who demand to see your genetic fingerprints before they let you do anything, and even then you might be trying to scam someone….

I wasn’t very happy about the entire thing anyway, because, halfway to the bank, my wonderful new earbuds started doing that thing that all headphones inevitably end up doing. You know what I’m talking about, if you’ve ever had headphones for more than three seconds….

Cutting out in one ear.

This is why I refuse to spend more than twenty bucks on a set of headphones. The cutting out. The fragility. The constant fucking failure.

I’m only 25 [soon to be 26, but I’m not quite sure how that happened], but I’ve been through five hundred pairs of fucking headphones since I got my first ‘walkman’…which wasn’t all that long ago. Fifteen years ago, at the most.

The damned things always break. Usually, there’s a loose wire/short type thing going on at the place where it plugs into the Thing Which Produces The Wonderful Noises. Sometimes, the problem is actually at the ear part. Either way, it’s usually the left ear [and I can’t actually figure out why].

This time, it seems to be at the ear piece, and it’s the left ear. And it’s very, very irritating, because I bought them in the middle of June, and they’re fucking wonderful earbuds — a near impossibility.

See, I really don’t like earbuds, because they generally don’t fit. But these? Well, I mentioned them before. Koss’ The Plug. All squishy and foamy and into-the-ear-ey.

But, now? Broken. Annoyingly broken.

I complained at Koss, but that was pretty much useless. Their answer was, “It’s covered by our warranty. Please be without your earbuds for many weeks while we take six dollars from you to replace them.”

I don’t much like that answer. I haven’t even had the damned things for three months. I shouldn’t have to buy another pair that soon.

So, I started digging around, and found out that someone did one of those things that I’d thought of first. They came up with special covers to go over just about any pair of regular earbuds that work much like the Koss ‘plug’ style earbud does.

So…I bought a set of those. And they come with an extra pair of earbuds. Hopefully, they’ll work out. Then I can use the earbuds that came with the iPod, and, when I need to, just buy The Cheapass Earbuds, and use them with these covers.

I guess I should mention that Gremlin’s pair of Koss earbuds are working just fine.

I could probably also mention that there’s only been one pair of headphones that didn’t [initially] fail in the cable for me. These fairly cheap, overly-large Sonys that were mostly plastic and kinda thick. They had the hearpieces that flipped around for that strange hand-to-the-ear listening thing that you see on TV sometimes, where someone’s doing some weird DJ or recording thing. Those just flat-out broke on me, and I had to duct tape them together repeatedly, until it finally became impossible to actually use them for anything other than a cat-hair magnet. I’ve had two of those, and they both broke in the same ways.

Why is it so hard to find headphones that don’t break? And why can’t they be comfortable?

I think the most comfortable pair of headphones I’ve ever owned were these single-line things with an irritating mic attachment. I was a big fan of the single line — it was actually long enough to reach to the back of the computer, too, and there was an in-line volume control — and the padding was lovely, but…of course, they broke. These failed right at the in-line volume control.

I tried getting around it all with a set of wireless headphones, but those were overly bulky, battery-consuming, and fuzzy-sounding.

Ih.

Now, I find myself once again filled with a need for tacos, and unable to think of a way to end this post….