Ok, I untwirl the cord to my headphones, sit down, put on the headphones and stay in this position for X hours. During this time I take off the headphones at most 3 or 4 times, simply placing them on the desk while I do whatever it is I need to be without them for.
Still, the next day, when I sit down at my computer, I have to untwrirl the damn cord again! And it’s not 3 or 4 twirls, more like 15-20, What is going on?!
There is no possibly way that the damn cord is being physically twirled 15-20 times in this period. They spend pretty much their entire existence either lying on the desk (immobilised) or on my head, and I don’t sit and spin on my chair.
Is this the same mechanic that causes telephone cords to be in a constant state of twirlieness? Does it has something to do with electromagnetism or what? It’s crazy! How does this happen and is there anyway to stop this insanity?
Yes, Stoneburg, altough I have no answers for you, I too have experienced this phenomenon. I have even neatly placed the headphones on the coat-hanger hook that fits on my bedroom door, so that they quietly hang without becoming a frustrating ball of twirl, but nevertheless, they will always be tormenting me at one point or another.
What I really need is a single headphone since I’m deaf in one ear (although I do like to rotate between left and right ears on the headphones to pick out different sounds)…
First investigate the half-twists. With phone cords, I found that I did indeed add a half twist every time I picked up and another when I put it down.
Another theory (WAG): Whever there is a bend in the cord, that gets “imprinted” in the material. Like bending a twist-tie, once you bend it, it stays bent. Cord material doesn’t stay bent, but may retain some of that, lose some of it’s elasticity. Lawsy, could I say that less clearly?
Yes I am pretty sure. And even if I did take them off AND managed to add half a twist AND always managed to twist them the same way I’d have to have done it 40 times for it to become this twirly! When I say I took them off 4 times, I maybe did it 5 or 6 times, but I did NOT do it 40 times.
Also, it’s actually a headset, with a mic boom sticking out, so I always put them down making half a twirl and pick them up by making half a twirl in the OPPOSITE direction!
And no, I don’t spin on the chair every half hour. And if I spin, I spin back the same way I came, adding zero twists.
“Well, the cord doesn’t twist itself.” Oh yeah?! Unless someone is sneaking in here at night and twisting them, they do twist themself!
Stover9: Do you know of any support groups we could join? This is driving me nuts.
Heck, forget the support group: Work on a way to harvest this new, heretofore untapped source of energy!
In all seriousness, I used to work with a headset (with curly cord) all day. On the days when I just sat at my desk and stared at the screen like one of the waking dead, the cord was fine. When I had a busy day, and I got up a lot, the cord got twisted. The other headset-wearers in the office had pretty similar experiences; the smart old hand who was bored restless always had his cord in a tangle, but the pudgy, sedentary guy who sat in the corner all day never had trouble. The curly cords on the handsets, which none of us ever used, were absolutely perfect.
I never counted the twists, or the times I took my headset off. But then again, I wasn’t blaming the headset, either.
