The Do-It-Yourselfer
I've mentioned several times that I have Bose noise cancelling headphones.I wear them at night to sleep (with no music), and I use them with my old Nintendo DS when I do my Spanish lesson (daily, progress is elusive.)
Bose is overrated, generally, and overpriced, but their NC headphones are the real deal. So I have them.
For noise cancellation, they're perfect--almost. The one flaw, and it's not insignificant, is that the headphone cushion (or earcup) fabric is so thin that it will split after six months or so of general use. There's an entire cottage industry of companies selling replacements.
I've bought replacements several times over the last three years or so, but when they split last week, I lazily decided that I wanted to just slap some tape over the split and see if it would work. I couldn't find any duct tape, but I did have electrical tape.
I mean, tape is tape, right?
It seems like electrical tape would be similar enough to duct tape to work. Plus, electrical tape is soft, so it would meld itself to the fabric more naturally.
After I cut the tape to fit, I applied it and it was as smooth as glass.
Overly satisfied with myself, I went on with life as usual.
Two days ago, I did my Spanish lesson, and I noticed that one of my ears seemed a little warm. Strange, really.
I finished the Spanish lesson and took off the headphones, then puttered around for a few minutes before going to the bathroom. I looked into the mirror--and saw an enormous tarry oval outline around my ear.
Oops.
As it turns out, electrical tape gets sort of melty with heat, and when it gets soft, it also gets gooey. Very gooey.
Somehow, my ears were warm enough (I had just gotten out of a hot shower) to activate disaster.
Sidenote: electrical tape residue is damned hard to scrub off your face.
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