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The simplest way for me to deal with the noise of the military helicopters that use the local airport to play war games was to buy a set of headphones that not only fit over my ears, but use an active noise canceling digital device to stop the madness. It would help if they were good at reproducing sound.
I did considerable research to figure out what I should buy and decided to go for the cheap pair of headphones to see if they would do the job for me. Unfortunately, my efforts to do that at NewEgg.com, where I've gotten reliable service previously, now has gotten so big and their order page so confusing and tedious that they literally wouldn't let me fill out the form and buy what I wanted. No more NewEgg.
When something like that happens (I spent two hours trying to get it to work), I take it as an omen to upscale my purchase, and decided to buy the expensive Bose headphones. To accomplish that I drove up to Raleigh and shopped at the Best Buy store. There has always been something suspicious about Best Buy to me. I've never gotten one rebate back from them that I applied for. I was basically just comparing prices anyway.
I went to the Apple Store in the same shopping mall to see if they had what I wanted in stock, and the price was the same, so I bought them there knowing they would handle my debit card without me having to worry about where the yellow went. (old Pepsodent toothpaste jingle '-))
On the way home from Raleigh I decided to try my new noise-canceling headphones out to see how much they reduced the sound associated with driving on the InterState. I was fairly impressed with the results. It wasn't like being inside an audiologist's chamber and perfectly quiet, but the road noise was substantially reduced. I put them on and took them off a number of times to be able to judge the difference they made.
The Moose Club is just up the road from my house. On Saturday night those twerps hold a dance and hire a band to play for them to get drunk and dance by. They're probably not twerps, just "good ol' boys" taking a break from the tedium of everyday life, but when they make a lot of noise doing so, they're twerps in my ignored opinion.
Last night was a good chance to see how affective these devices are. The bass down to the Moose Lodge was thumping it's way through my walls, and the bass drum was loud as usual. I put the headphones on, and they significantly reduced the noise, but did not eliminate it. Just to see what would happen I inserted foam earplugs in my ear and put the headphones on top of them. That did the trick.
This morning, it's a little chilly. Not bad, but enough so that it's more comfortable when I turn on my new ceramic room heater. The fan does make more noise than I like, but for $18 I deal with it. For the hell of it I put on the headphones to find out how much the fan noise would be lowered. A lot, but again, not completely.
I remembered the switch that turns on the electronic device that creates interfering sound waves inside the cups of the ear pieces and turned it on and off several times to find out how much good that does. Quite a bit. The difference between having it turned on and when it's turned off is significant.
$300 plus $23 tax is a lot of money to pay to have some peace inside my own house, but yelling at screaming at military helicopters and Moose Club members and my younger brother's tractor noises is not productive nor practical. It only reminds me of how little power I have to change what's wot. I've used the foam earplugs from time immemorial, but they only go so far in making the noise tolerable, and no mas.
This entire subject should be a non-issue. According to the audiologist at the VA hospital I'm legally deaf. Unfortunately, or maybe not, I bought and used a weirdo device called the Neurophone to learn to hear sound through my skin. My take is that it works in some mysterious way.
I never have complaints about turning my TV and audio products up enough to irritate people. I don't drive other people nuts asking them to repeat what they just said. None of the usual indicators imply that I'm in the least bit deaf. Only that audiologist at the VA. That might change in the future. The placebo effect might wear off and I'll have to admit I'm deaf, but if that happens I wouldn't need these sound canceling headphones would I? It's a crazy world I live in.
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
