Warning: Powerful speakers cause false alarms

A few years back we rummaged through a garage sale and came across a little stereo system. It had a 3-CD changer which was broken, but the radio and cassette player portions worked fine. Its price tag? $5. Not bad, considering we did need a cassette player, but it seemed a bit large and unwieldy just for that. Allan, however, noticed something else: the nice Bose speakers attached, good quality ones which would easily have been worth over $100 retail. So we bought it, and then promptly put it in the corner to collect dust for the next few years ;-P

Since Todd moved back in with us temporarily last month, we had to rearrange the bedroom a bit to make room for his extra items. So, I moved the stereo to the nightstand on Todd's side of the bed, figuring I could play classical music cassette tapes for him to listen to as he drifted off to sleep at night. That worked well... until the following weekend, when it came time to vacuum the bedroom, and the large speakers sitting on the floor proved yet again unwieldy.

This weekend, Allan hit upon the perfect solution. He has long owned one of those fancy-schmancy sound systems with the big subwoofer and all those little speakers you can scatter around your living room, creating the perfect surround-sound experience, yadda yadda yadda... Well, he swapped out two of the little speakers for the two Boses from the garage sale, and voila! Problem solved! Except... now there was the matter of where to put the big Bose speakers with respect to our tiny living room's entertainment center (keep in mind our entire apartment is maybe 800 sq. ft total, so "big and unwieldy" is a relative term). Allan discovered that they fit perfectly on the TV stand behind the TV itself. Proud of himself, he flopped down on the futon and settled down to watch a movie, trying out the new speaker hookup for a test drive.

Things sounded great! And heck-- if you were a blind person you would never have noticed the next mishap-- odd color effects on the TV screen.

"Oh crud", thought Allan, "the TV's finally going out". His next thought was one of glee: "Yay, that means we can get the big flat-screen monitor!" Fortunately for our bank account (and for his physical well-being), he wisely decided to investigate and see if he could fix the problem first. Sure enough, what do you suppose the cause was? The strong magnetic force of the speakers was distorting the TV colors! He put the speakers back down on the floor, the TV returned to normal, and he shook his head sadly-- gone was the excuse to get a nice, big flat-screen monitor :-P

(originally posted at:  http://www.myspace.com/hellykwee/blog/359604236)