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Tuesday, March 08, 2005

I have just successfully completed a very delicate operation...on a vhs tape. It's the third such surgery I've performed since we moved here. My first was just a simple transplant of the little flippy plastic flap that shields the tape. Those are really easy. My copy of Support Your Local Sheriff got a bit broken during the move here, so I just took a flap from a blank tape and put it on my good tape.

I kept the crippled blank tape just in case I ever needed it, never thinking I really would. Turns out it's a good thing I did, cuz last spring my copy of The Searchers had some internal damage--one of the bits of plastic that holds the tape in place broke off, and obviously the tape wouldn't play after that. So I opened that cassette, removed the spools and film, and put them inside the intact cassette that I'd taken the flap from. I put the good flap from the original Searchers tape on the new cassette, and was good to go!

And finally, yesterday I was watching a tape that my work buddy recorded for me (he's my NCIS, CSI: Miami, Battlestar Gallactica, and now Numbers provider), and suddenly it went clunka clunka clunka and stopped working. I pulled it out, very relieved it hadn't gotten stuck inside and killed my vcr. The right side of the tape had wound crooked, with a big lumpy loop in it. I shook the tape and it rattled--obviously something inside had broken, and a piece of it got caught between the tape and the spool. I had to go to work in about ten minutes, so I didn't have time to fix it then, but I knew I wanted to try, because there are still eps of NCIS and CSI: Miami on it that I haven't seen yet!

So tonight I rewound the tape, which it fortunately could still do, then got out my trusty tiny screwdrivers and opened up the cassette. Sure enough , two little nonessential bits of plastic fell out. I put it back together, screwed it tight shut, and now I'm watching Battlestar Gallactica. Hooray! I love fixing things successfully!

4 comments:

  1. I will have to hire you for your VHS surgery skills if my music videos tape ever goes broken. I am getting away from these frail things, however; my DVD player is in the mail! (encased in a Playstation)

    (he's my NCIS, CSI: Miami, Battlestar Gallactica, and now Numbers provider)Sounds like you're hooked, girl.

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  2. No problem! I come from a long line of vhs surgeons. Well, maybe a short line--my mom figured out it's possible to open a vhs without ruining the movie (she used Scotch tape to fix a copy of "Rio Bravo" years and years ago).

    As to the tv shows, I'm almost addicted to "NCIS" and "CSI: Miami", the others are just for fun ;-)

    BTW, how in the world do you manage to make italics work in your comments? I don't have any html knowledge, and I'd like to use italics in comments, but I can never make it work!

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  3. I see why you had to e-mail me about italics now. I forgot to come back to this one.

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  4. Italics is and you put words between there. :)

    Lily

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