Bad Technology

Remember the short review I gave of the Sony SRF-M35FP radio a few months ago? Well, guess what? After only a year of use, my cheap piece of crap finally decided to start acting up on me. The radio broke in such a way that only the left speaker on my headphones would emit sound. I tried a different pair of headphones and got the same result. The problem was with the radio, not with my headphones.

So what do you do when your radio breaks while you’re in prison? Even if it were under warranty, the prison will only allow equipment repaired by the manufacturer to be sent HOME instead of being returned to you at the prison. Inmates used to commit acts of fraud by manipulating serial numbers and such to get the manufacturer to repair equipment that was well past the warranty expiration date, so the warden had to put a stop to that. Now no one even bothers to fill out their warranty cards any more.

So if your radio breaks while you’re in prison, “officially” you have to purchase a new one from the commissary. You can only make ONE such purchase PER YEAR, so you had better learn how to take care of your equipment. I really didn’t feel like shelling out another forty bucks for a brand new lemon, so I sought out an inmate solution. I found a fix-it guy.

Since headphones and radios are so expensive in prison, there is a huge hustle in repairing them. If you do quality work, you’ll find no shortage of business. All I had to do was ask around, and friends gave me suggestions of where to take my broken Sony.

If you are in the radio repair business, you’ll have to accumulate a ton of minor contraband to practice your trade. A homemade candle for soldering, duct tape, wire, and a broken pair of nail clippers to use for a screwdriver are just a few of the things you’ll need. As I walked into the fix-it guy’s cell, I caught him smoking a cigarette (also contraband).

I told him what the symptoms were, and I left my radio with him for an hour. When I returned, he had fixed my radio as best he could. He told me that the volume control knob had broken. Since I didn’t have a replacement, he rewired my radio so that the left side channel plays out of both sides.

The fix-it guy said that my radio’s problem is common. He told me that he’s fixed radios that were only five months old that had developed the same problem. So now I have  confirmation that these radios are JUNK.

His fee was a mere 10 stamps ($2.50), but since I didn’t have the cash on me at the time, he accepted a bag of generic nacho cheese Doritos as payment. I gratefully gave him his chips, and now I’m the proud owner of a MONO-STEREO Sony Walkman. I don’t really notice the difference unless I’m listening to a song that likes to bounce notes around from one side to the other. All of the right-side stuff is just . . . missing. Oh, well.

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I miss my iPod.