Adam earns his dues

I've been handling the books for Mischief again this year, to Kris' near complete consternation. He's annoyed with me for agreeing to be part of the team when he feels I should move on. While I'll agree I'd enjoy the season more if I could actually practice with the team, I don't think he quite understands how much social benefits I draws (and therefore he draws) from being part of such an awesome community.

At least, I didn't think he recognized it until today.

Adam Brown wanted to work off his team dues, an offer I made to anyone on the team who wanted to work 11 hours for their dues instead of paying cash up front. Kris heard word of this and decided to take matters into his own hands for the Christmas gift I had given him late last year: a car stereo that he could hook his iPod into. I was inspired by Doyle's stereo, and wanted to give Kris the option of listening to books on CD or from his iPod. Of course, this was before he switched jobs from a 40 minute commute to a 5 minute commute.

So, Kris arranged to have Adam install a new stereo in his car. We wandered over to Fry's to look at stereos, with Kris' wanting to buy the cheapest one and my wanting to buy the least expensive one that had nice buttons. Fortunately, the price difference between the two was only $20, and the nicer buttons won.

Unfortunately, the process of taking apart a Civic dashboard isn't particularly straightforward and took Adam around 4 hours to do, just to get started.

He spent most of yesterday working on the car, pulling out the dashboard, disconnecting the old stereo, buying the new one with the new frame insert to hold it, fighting with the dozen extra screws he ended up with at the end (always a scary thing).

When we purchased the stereo, we bought a stereo connector, too. At one point during the day, when I was in the office, I heard Kris and Adam launch into a huff about how the connector we were sold was the wrong size, it totally didn't fit the back of the stereo we had. Adam asked if we wanted to go back to Fry's or if he should just cut the connector at the back of the stereo and solder or twist the wires together. I was fairly unaware of the conversation until it permeated my consciousness and I realized that something was quite amiss.

I went outside to look at the connector itself. Turns out, the connector plugged into the harness, not the stereo. It needed to be connected to the connector wires coming out of the stereo, no soldering or harness wire cutting needed.

Admittedly, I was amused at both the let's-do-the-hardest-thing-possible attitude of Kris and Adam, and ease of the actual solution.

When Adam finished installing the stereo this morning, he came in to talk to us. Turns out, three of the lights on the stereo were broken, and didn't light at all. He recommended returning the stereo for another one. I said, nah, to Adam's surprise. I didn't think Kris would mind, as long as the stereo worked. Those last three buttons weren't really that important.

Adam had to ask three times if I was sure. How many times have I seen people reject good items because they weren't perfect? How many tonnes of food is discarded yearly because it wasn't perfect? Way too many. The stereo worked. So what if a button didn't light. It was fine.

When Kris saw, he agreed.

Here's another item off my to-do list. Thanks, Adam!