BVI: The MP3 Player

Now what's the first thing your 2 year old want's for her birthday? Right...an MP3 player. What a great gadget (I'm told...I still have a box of records). It's amazing how much crap you can stuff into one of these. I'm told my whole box of records wouldn't even fill up an MP3 player's little toe nail. They've got songs and stories and videos...if Apple makes one that can scratch your back we'd have no use for personal interaction at all. Oh wait...that's Facebook.

But now see, here's the rub. Like every other crutch we create for ourselves ( like the GPS in my airplane) if we lose it the Cosmos comes shattering down. Just as the CD people laughed at my records, so too do MP3 people laugh at the CD people. Funny story...I remember an SNL skit 10 years ago making fun of Apple. They did a routine about the new iPad. But in that skit, the iPad was a feminine hygiene product. Now who's laughing?

Since everyone coming on the trip was assured that the boat would have an MP3 player, no one (except Ron) bothered to bring any old technology CDs.
Since the boat next to ours was virtually the same as ours, During the boat checkout they decided to use the other boat as the demo and save time by briefing both crews at the same time. This included demonstration of the MP3 player (which was internal to the CD/radio).

Shortly after we got underway, one of the crew decides to jack in (Matrix fans will get it). Uh oh...there's no input jack. UH OH...THERE'S NO INPUT JACK!! Holy crap! You'd have thought a diabetic had just discovered he had no insulin left. This can't be true! The place where the input jack on the other boat was is just a black plastic plug on this one. For Steve (who travels everywhere with a mirror, flashlight, tool kit and Rescue tape) the gauntlet had been thrown down. We were like college freshmen trying to jam our jacks into every slot, crack and hole we could find. We tried picking the black plastic plug out and scraped and poked and...

Wait! here it is! A USB port! Saved! Nope...just for charging. For the next few days I would guess that no less than 8 man-hours were expended looking for this El Dorado to no avail. We pulled the panel off, poked and prodded at all the wires behind, everything. Why, even the girls gave it a shot. "Cynthia, after all us manly men have gone over this thing with a fine tooth comb, what makes you think you can do any better?" Response: "You never know". This went on for days. Several times I gave it another shot...just in case I missed something.

One afternoon I walk into the salon and Cynthia and Kelly have got the electronics panel open again and they're all whispering and poking. "OK...what's going on?"
They had cheated. They read the manual. And they wanted to be able to get it working and say "In Your Face!" but they were busted.
According to the manual there was an MP3 input on the back of the unit (AUX input). This, of course, launched a whole new round of scientific investigation. We found the AUX input but it was already hooked up to something else, and no one had the right cord along to plug in. Bummer.
A couple days later, I was digging around back there trying to fix some other broken thing and decided to see what was connected to the AUX input. I pulled and pulled on the cord and out comes a neatly coiled...MP3 jack. And after we had listened to Ron's Johnny Mathis CD about 50 times. The horror...the horror...