Unable to sleep until past 3:00 AM last, I am not having a good day. So I read Ellery Queen and continued my reverse engineering project of a broken DVD player. The only fascinating part was the laser assembly and it was something incredible. I spent two hours examining it most closely, stripping away all the plastic parts. I still don’t know which of two tiny components is the laser, but I found some lenses including one with crystal properties. Curiosity got me going. I had thrown what I thought was the laser into a cigar box, and when I returned this morning found a magnetic rod stuck against the lens. Realizing that was an assumption, I experimented further to discover it was not the rod, that there were two tiny magnets holding a moveable lens casing.
Sadly, I have no macro equipment capable to photograph such tiny objects, so here is what I saw along with my conclusions. When you open the lid to insert a disk, what looks like the laser “eye” is really this tiny floating lens. It must be what moves around to track the disk data. I don’t recommend doing so, but if you were to touch it, you’ll find it appears suspended in air.
It is being held by four tiny but flexible wires, which allow two magnets to guide the lens around, probably to get focus on the spinning disk. This is only for spot adjustment for there is a guide rail that slides the entire component along the disk radius. The part is very fragile, although there are undoubtedly better, and more expensive, ways to accomplish the same thing.
I had hoped to fire up the laser, but the design is clearly meant not to be tinkered with. Mind you, the same could be said of all the farmer’s daughters I’ve know in my short life. I have another unit nearing extinction and now I know what I’m looking for. In all, this is the most complicated electronic object I’ve ever examined, something to marvel at. Even the plastic housing, the most empirically designed part, must have required unbelievable design effort. I estimate it had 350 different facets, angles, drill holes and crevasses. Easy prey for a pair of side cutters.
Now for some disturbing news. Every other month, I do a series of spot checks designed to “keep an eye on things back home”. Apparently in only slightly less than twenty years behind the rest of the world, my brother has discovered the Internet. He's opened a Facebook account filled with the glowing reports of his greatest accomplishments. Ah, but that is where the twenty years comes into play.
Author's note: I digress for a little background on this personal issue, for better understanding. It helps if you bear in mind my brother's life mission was to prove he could do anything I could. These things happen and finally I had to remove myself as his motive for such bad behavior. So imagine my horror to see that Facebook entry to realize his development ceased when I severed his option to meddle in my affairs. The problem was, when he found out he could not compete, he began to destroy. It's a pity, but it does happen and it is a case for other's to study. I was always too busy to bog down in it.
He honestly felt the only reason I did things like read or play music was to "prove" I was better than him, which I consistently denied. Never once did I ever ponder such a thought before undertaking a thing. Later in life, I was to learn that bothered him even more. He feels he never got the attention and rewards he deserved because everything I did made him look bad. Why he's relaxing and I come along and make him look lazy. You get my meaning.
When I last associated with the man, and yes, he was a fully-grown adult at the time, he stated that of all the billion paths in this life, I had somehow intentionally come along and "stolen" all the good ones. Leaving him no choice but to steal my motorycle, hit on my girlfriends, break up my band, etc.
So imagine my horror to discover nothing has changed.
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