HEADPHONES!
Yes! Headphones, earphones, ear-buds, whatever you want to call them. I don't like em'. So you're sitting there doing important business and listening to some music with ear-buds (like the iPod variety). All of a sudden something comes up, like someone is giving instructions, and you need to put your music away for a minute or so. When you take your headphones back out they are in a giant tangled ball . I get so frustrated at this and it makes me want to invent some sort of sub-dermal implant that just beams the music to your brain, so I don't have to worry about the stupid little ear-pieces tangling, breaking, cracking or getting chewed on by pets.
Now I'm going to talk about the quality of headphones and my experience with the many I have had. Basically my summary is IT SUCKS. I have literally gone through at least 15 pairs. You're probably thinking I'm doing something wrong. Well, I think the people who make the stuff are doing wrong. It doesn't matter if they are $2, $10, $20, $50 or $200, they won't last you more than a few months. If your lucky you may get a good pair that will last you a few years.
I used my iPod touch's standard white iPod earphones for a good long time. Then my cousin's cute, but sometimes stupid, dog chewed them up. I sort of fixed them and used them for a while, a few bite-marks but they worked fine. Later I traded that set to my cousin for her headphones with the built in microphone that I could use with my touch. The next time I dog-sat for them, their dumb dog destroyed two pairs of my headphones, the ones with the microphone and another. The worst part was after she did that, SHE PEED IN MY BED! I was pretty pissed off and pissed on... My cousin told me that her family went through the same thing, tonnes of chewed cords, headsets, stuffed animals and other things. I felt a little better knowing that I wasn't the only one in the same position.
Time passes and one day, I thought I was a big shot so I went and bought those nice big Bose over-ear, noise cancelling, extra bass headphones.
Here they are:
Cool eh'? Well yeah, they were for the first two or 3 months.
One day I picked them up and examined them before putting them on. I noticed a small crack on the right side of the plastic holding the right ear piece. I circled it in the picture [SEE ABOVE PHOTO]. I didn't think much of it at first, but after a while I sort of noticed the crack getting bigger. To avoid further breaking I decided to slather a little glue on the crack. It didn't help. It kept on getting worse until it inevitably snapped in two.
I put some glue on it and left if for 48 hours. I fixed my precious headphones! I sat down and happily listened to some music for an hour or so until the stupid right ear piece popped right off and landed in my lap. I was back to square one. I tried every brand of glue or tape imaginable, but since the angle of the crack was weird, nothing worked.
I eventually went to the store and found a pair of headphones for $2! The quality was surprisingly good. Now they are the main set I use. But the story doesn't end here. I used the $2 set for about 5 months or so, then the left audio jack contact on my iPod touch stopped working properly. It only works if you twist it into a good position and don't move the iPod around. This is really annoying because I listen to my iPod all the time and I can't really walk around without fiddling with it every few minutes to get the sound to come out from the left earphone. I have tried cleaning lint out of the jack, swabbing it with alcohol, prodding it with a toothpick and some other stuff...nothing works.
I hope I can fix this. Then I can go back to my musical groovin'.
