For the past couple of months I’ve been trying to finish a keyboard keyer kit. What a keyboard keyer does is let you plug in an old PC keyboard in and get Morse code out. It’s a geeky ham radio thing and most hams use paddles where one side sends dots and the other side sends dashes:

Anyway, the keyboard keyer attaches to one of these three LCD displays:

You can see the keyer in the top right corner. Well, I need a cable to go from the LCD display to the keyer. I’ve been waiting for MONTHS for my friend Greg to bring the cable he made for me, but he keeps forgetting it at work. MONTHS! So I finally went to Norvac, the only electronic parts dealer in the Silicon Forest, to buy:

1. 10-pin housings (the black rectangular things in the lower right),
2. 14-pin housings,
3. 10-wire cable, and
4. a crimping tool.

What they sold me was:

1. 10-pin housings
2. 18-pin housings,
3. 9-wire cable, and
4. a crimping tool.

Now 18-pin housings can be made into 14-pin housings with a pocket knife. They’re just plastic and the lower two in the picture are the pieces after I cut one apart. But you can’t add a wire to a 9-wire cable (it’s that rainbow-colored ribbon sticking out from under the lower right LCD display.)

I don’t know how Norvac can screw up everything I buy from them, but they do. The pre-made cables are all wrong, they sell me the wrong parts, etc. They are just clowns.

It’s a good thing that I got an email from Col. Noh Dae-Jung telling me I can make a sizable percentage of his $30,000,000 bank transfer and can manage his overseas properties as well! I’m rich! Now to switch my car insurance to Geico!