It might be my age. It might be that you can't teach an old dog new tricks (it might even be you can't teach your grandma to suck eggs), and there are probably a whole load more idioms that describe the fact that the older you get, the more stuck in your ways you become.

I think the simple explanation is that [whatever] has worked for (in my case) the last forty years or so, so why change things now.

This might seem to be a funny topic to discuss, but it is Saturday and it is light and a departure from some of my recent (and more melancholy posts). It might also strike you as a bit of an odd topic to suddenly randomly drop on you all.

Let me explain.

It really is very simple. I had a client meeting this morning and basically the volume output on my computer is rubbish and so I always use earphones. 

Although I had coiled and put them down carefully yesterday, I still had to endure the crap output from my computer speakers while engaging with my client and painstakingly untangling them at the same time. Anyone who has used anything other than earbuds will be able to relate to what I am saying.

Disaster.

So, as I am there doing my best (and being under pressure always makes it worse), I dig up an old memory from maybe 15 years ago. The fact is that there is a way to avoid this entanglement of cables and furthermore a client of mine showed me. I do remember that it involved forming a figure of 8 with the cables rather than a conventional coil, but other than that I really don't remember.

The funniest thing is that I taught Mama_Rah the method almost immediately and she can do it no problem. Or at least she could until fairly recently, as for now I really don't know because she has converted to earbuds too. So, all in all, she can still do something that I taught her but then subsequently forgot.

D'oh

Of course the solution is that I should just convert to earbuds and I do actually have a pair and I have used them. The only thing is that their charge only seems to last 45 minutes which is no good if I am doing an hour. Maybe I am charging them wrongly or maybe I should do what Mama_Rah often does and that it to use one at a time, This means one is always charging and she can simply swap over.

The problem is that, while it offers a solution of sorts, I need my ears to be equalised. I can't stand being in a car when only one window is open. The pressure does my head in - literally. In a similar way having only one earphone in somehow makes me feel lopsided. I experience the same thing when the mix of an audio file / CD plays with the output, for example moving from the left speaker (for in effect that is what it really is) to the right or vice-versa; or even worse rapid alternations.

I still think earbuds are the best solution, I am never going to remember that figure of 8 thing, but for now I am just going to carry on being a dinosaur managing my tangled earphones.

As always stay safe and well my friends.