Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Useful suggestions

I know how much everyone enjoys it when I make suggestions for how to improve things. The universe needs my input, and I have marvelous ideas. So far I've covered ill-fitting sheets, bad drivers, and books in need of copy editors.

Today I'm tackling the very difficult problem of ELECTRICAL CORDS. Before you start emailing, texting, Twittering, or commenting with helpful hints about re-using cardboard tubes from paper towels or toilet paper to stow cords, or how a twist tie can tame an unruly bunch of cords, let me explain.

I mean the cords themselves.

Here it is: Why on earth, in a world filled with technological marvels, does almost every electrical appliance that I might MOVE from one spot or another have to have a cord that comes in two parts? The very act of moving anything that has more than one piece almost guarantees that I will lose at least some part of it.

The Kindle was sidelined for a while until we found the missing bit of its two-piece cord. The missing link was the size of a thick matchbook. It might as well be a microdot when it gets loose in my car or slithers down the side of the couch or vanishes under someone's bed.

The laptop's cord is in two pieces, but I always keep it hooked together--am I committing some kind of electrical crime? If I want to tote it with me, I suppose I might want to separate them, but usually I'm not taking it somewhere. Usually I'm, well, using it!

Why must these cords be in two pieces? Why? Okay, okay, okay. Different electricities or something? I'm not buying it. If there is some real reason (*snort*) for the cord to be in two different pieces, can't they put a strip of plastic connecting the two? Do I have to think of everything?

See how easily I've solved this problem with one little suggestion? I am going to go to the store, get myself a roll of packing tape, and tape these suckers together.

How simple the solution!

Now, off to think about how else I can improve this world we live in.

(You're welcome.)

4 comments:

Ladyslipper said...

Well I am extremely happy you found the little Kindle cord. But I have even more fustrations with the laptop cords. I bought a replacement cord for my laptop and it comes in THREE pieces, with a different end plug for each computer. We keep snapping them off. So I can't use my laptop right now due do a snapped end and the first piece chewed on by the cats. From Patty

Janet Spaeth said...

My point exactly, Patty! Why do companies put all sorts of time and energy into the things that's being plugged in, and nothing to the cord and plug?

HELLO!?!?!

Yesterday, my precious child showed me half a computer cord, which had been missing for eons. I'd bought a new one, finally.

Do you think that might be the reason? Do these companies PLAN that people like us will lose part of the cord?

Hmmm.

Not planned obsolence. Planned absentmindedness.

Ah, Big Companies I Buy Stuff From. You know me too well....

Janet Spaeth said...

I am not the Grammar Idiot I seem to be in the previous comment.

"things that's being plugged in"???

Sheesh.

*increasing caffeine*

Kacie said...

Our new puppy, a 14-week-old rescued black lab named Java, just chewed up part of a laptop cord. You can't buy just one half of the cord, though. And you can't buy a new cord for a 1-year-old laptop from the manufacturer. They use NEW AND IMPROVED cords for those, so you have to go to someplace like ebay to find said cord, and then cross your fingers and hope for the best. ;)