Broken Things

I was at the library the other day and found it in the "Used - For Sale" section for only two dollars. I thought it was a real steal - two dollars for a copy of the dual-disk, wide screen version of Gladiator! And it was a great deal. And it worked great the first time when I put it into my laptop and watched it all the way through one night. But apparently it was only good enough to work the first time.

We were going to watch it today as part of our relaxing Sunday afternoon, so I took the DVD out of the box where it had been resting quietly since the last time I played it in my laptop, and placed it carefully in the DVD player.

"Read" "Read" "Read" went the display.

And then ...

"Unsupported".

Huh?

That didn't make any sense. I know the DVD was working. So I tried resetting it a couple times, but the same thing happened. Then to check my own sanity, I pulled it out of the DVD player and placed it carefully in the laptop (my Linux laptop). But the default Movie Player application didn't pop up. Odd. I checked the System menu, which normally lists all the available drives. And it wasn't listing the DVD. Odder still. I started my alternate DVD player application (VLC) and it actually started to play the intro on the disk ... but then stalled out when I tried to get it to play the actual movie.

Just for fun, I took it out of the Linux laptop and placed it (carefully) in the Windows laptop. And started the tried-and-true DVD player application, whose name escapes me at the moment. And it worked! It actually kicked up the main menu and we were able to start up the movie.

The only problem with the Windows laptop is the built-in security timer that throws the computer into lock mode if you don't touch the keyboard or mouse for five or six minutes. So we were supposed to tap the Shift key every so often just to keep that from happening. But we still managed to get locked out twice. The first time, I was able to log in and get it going again. But the second time, it wouldn't restart. The disk refused to be read. I spent nearly an hour trying various things to get it to restart. Arg!

Out of sheer frustration, I took a good, close look at the disk itself and discovered two things.


First, the inner ring is cracked. Badly. Not sure if that is an issue or not.

Second, the disk is discolored around the inner ring, which seems to indicate that the inner foil has become detached from the plastic and is probably mangled. I pressed on it with my fingers and almost got it back to the original color, but that didn't help it inside the DVD player. It still won't play.

The kids were disappointed that they couldn't finish it. They were almost done. Now we'll have to go find another copy somewhere. It's definitely one of those movies we'll watch over and over again. (I've already seen it at least half a dozen times.)

But the day wasn't over yet. There was more failure to come!

As if our trouble with the DVD wasn't enough, Deb's flash drive - the one on which she keeps all her stories and notes - apparently stopped working today. No reason, just stopped working. When it's plugged into the computer, the little LED inside doesn't light, and the computer doesn't recognize anything plugged in.

I took it apart to see if there was anything obvious wrong with it - broken wires, loose components, anything like that. But the only thing I found was an input pin which was supposed to have a resistor soldered onto it, but it appeared that no resistor had ever been placed there. So that didn't make any sense.

Luckily, we were able to find all her stories on various other computers, and I let her use my flash drive.

But this is just weirdly coincidental, having two things go bad on the same day. Especially when they were working fine yesterday.

If it weren't for the fact that all our troubles are so trivial, I might start thinking that we were being tortured by leprechauns.