A Glitch In The Matrix

[MildredHubble]

After my surreal experience today soldering electrical connections on my guitar project only to find they didn't work, then unsoldering them and twisting the wires did work, then soldering them only to find they didn't work again. It really felt like a "Glitch in the Matrix".

I occasionally have these sorts of experiences where weird stuff happens and it kinda feels like someone is messing with reality's source code.

I thought I would ask if any other people have experienced things like this. I'm sure it can't just be me? I'm sure a lot of us have had that odd experience where USB cables won't plug in no matter how many times you rotate them.

So this is a thread for those weird and often frustrating "glitches".

 

[Princess Viola]

IDK if this fully counts as a glitch in the Matrix or not, but it's still something weird that I distinctly remember happening.

This was years back when I was still in my teens and I'd lost the stylus to my Nintendo 3DS. I have no idea how I lost it, but I did. It wasn't in the stylus slot in the system and I looked literally everywhere for it: my bedroom, the couch, the floor,etc. I even lifted up the couch to see if it'd maybe fallen into the couch or something. Couldn't find it at all.

After I gave up on finding it, I sat down on the recliner in the living room and, as I did so, I heard a small clatter on the floor. I get up and there's the stylus on the ground. It genuinely wasn't there before and I'd checked that chair when I was looking for it.

It was like it just respawned into reality as I sat down.

 

[Outdated]

....twisting the wires did work, then soldering them only to find they didn't work....

Are you getting a diode or similar around the wrong way when you poke it through the board? Left becomes right, etc?

 

[MildredHubble]

Are you getting a diode or similar around the wrong way when you poke it through the board? Left becomes right, etc?

There is a diode that I assume is there to isolate the battery, well to be honest I haven't examined the circuit very closely but I'm pretty sure it's doing something along those lines.

The PCB worked perfectly in the other guitar so I switched to using the factory one in the one I'm building, at least until I had it working.

It would work great when I twisted the wires together from the guitar pickup to the volume and tone circuits. All looked good and was working. I pulled the guitar cable and battery and literally just soldered the twisted wires together and then it stopped working. This kept on happening until I got annoyed and risked soldering while the circuit was live. Now everything works fine!

The only issue I have is that the phase switch isn't working right, but that's in the passive circuit so is unlikely to be related.

Both boards (DIY and Factory made) behaved identically.

 

[Outdated]

and literally just soldered the twisted wires together and then it stopped working.

Sounds like you need advice from someone that knows a lot more about solder than I do. What you describe simply doesn't make sense, unless somehow the solder or it's flux is interfering with the connectivity.

 

[MildredHubble]

What you describe simply doesn't make sense, unless somehow the solder or it's flux is interfering with the connectivity.

Exactly! If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it. I know there must be some explanation but I'm damned if I can figure out what was going on.

I was literally sitting there slowly going insane. My girlfriend got quite concerned as I was in the midst of all these cables with my head in my hands saying "But all I did was solder the wires together??? I don't get it??? The wires only work when there's no solder?!??"

I wondered if maybe the OP Amp IC had some kind of failsafe mode and it was being triggered somehow by the soldering iron and somehow was being kept in that state until I disconnected the pickup and broke the circuit.

But whatever it was, the circuit works brilliant now!

 

[Lysholm]

What iron are you using?

 

[MildredHubble]

What iron are you using?

I'm using a Weller WSD50 (of the top of my head). I may be wrong about the exact model number but it's something like that


EDIT: I just checked, it is a WSD50.

 

[Lysholm]

So, I thought maybe you were using an under-powered iron, but you aren't. The results you describe are a cold joint, but it's hard to not sink this nail with such a big hammer. I'm inclined to validate you "glitch" theory.

-

Someone should start one of those glitch in the matrix story threads here. I remember helping a babysitter plant a tree in their front yard when I was like ten. Now, twenty-five years later, that tree is eithy feet tall and four feet in diameter. This is impossible.

 

[MildredHubble]

So, I thought maybe you were using an under-powered iron, but you aren't. The results you describe are a cold joint, but it's hard to not sink this nail with such a big hammer. I'm inclined to validate you "glitch" theory.

-

Someone should start one of those glitch in the matrix story threads here. I remember helping a babysitter plant a tree in their front yard when I was like ten. Now, twenty-five years later, that tree is eithy feet tall and four feet in diameter. This is impossible.

I was sure that was it too, but I was getting continuity on the multi meter everywhere I checked. I even tracked every cable. Double and triple checked the active circuit. I had swapped the circuit in to a factory made guitar and it worked. So I took the factory made board and soldered it in to the new guitar and it was doing exactly the same thing.

As irrational as it sounds, it just didn't like the guitar. It wasn't until I wanted to figure out what was happening during the soldering process and kept everything connected to an amp that it all started working.

Weird stuff. But being as rational as possible, I know that there has to be something simple going on that caused it, I just can't see it.

But it's fascinating to me when stuff like that happens.

Did you really plant a tree that grew to this proportions so rapidly? I have to say it sounds quite amazing!

As for glitches in the Matrix, a few months ago I opened the kitchen cupboard and one of my girlfriend's favourite mugs fell out and hit the tiled kitchen floor where I expected it shatter into pieces. But instead it hit the floor and bounced up about 3 feet it the air and I was able to trap it with my leg against the fridge before it hit the floor again. It was like the mug was made of rubber!

 

[Outdated]

Now, twenty-five years later, that tree is eithy feet tall and four feet in diameter. This is impossible.

Did you really plant a tree that grew to this proportions so rapidly? I have to say it sounds quite amazing!

When I was a six year old kid shopping with Mum there was a media push in the supermarket promoting native plants and Mum decided to buy a couple of trees, 25 cents each. They were tiny seedlings, they each only had two leaves.

She bought a River Redgum because the Murray River was a big part of her family's life and she bought a Tasmanian Bluegum just because it sounded exotic. The bluegum went in the front yard and the redgum out the back, this is just in a suburban quarter acre block.

The redgum was a freak, it got really big really fast. When I was 16 Mum hired a professional tree lopper to remove it because it was too big and dangerous. 25 metres tall and 35 metres across the canopy. It shaded our whole yard and two neighbouring yards. The main trunk was ,as with your tree, 4 feet in diameter. 1200 mm.

When Mum told the tree lopper that it was only ten years old he argued with her, he said there's no way a tree gets that big in less than 25 years, but he got to count the rings and she was right.

River Redgums can be deadly, they drop branches that they decide they don't need any more and this happens without warning. We have community service announcements on TV and radio warning tourists not to camp underneath them.

It happens just after the first rain after a long dry spell. The trees retain as much shade as they can during drought and as soon as they get some water they drop a couple of the lower branches and use that water for more growth at the top.

 

[Lysholm]

Did you really plant a tree that grew to this proportions so rapidly?

There's just no way. It's an ash tree (I only know this because it had the notices on it for Emerald Ash Borer treatment) and it should take them twice as long to reach that size in our climate. I suppose it's possible it's being fed by a leaky water main or sewer, though.

River Redgums can be deadly, they drop branches that they decide they don't need any more and this happens without warning.

Might as well go for a dip in the Finniss.

 

[Outdated]

Might as well go for a dip in the Finniss.

That gave me a smile, I lived right next to the Finniss for about 10 years.

 

[kityoume]

I feel that reality adjusts to my thoughts, for example, when I think about drinking water, someone tells me "by the way, drink some water" and it is so unexpected and unpredictable, but at the same time it coincides so much with my thoughts that I am shocked.

I can think of meeting someone today and then actually meeting that person, I can think of someone and get a message from them right away, my wishes come true in a strange way:

there was a barn building near my house and I constantly thought about painting it outside because it looked bad and in my opinion affected the price of real estate in our area, I dreamed about it all the time until one day I saw that it was painted by others people, exactly in the color that I thought.

 

[MildredHubble]

I've had large objects literally disappear, clothes seemingly duplicate themselves, multiple smoke detectors go off at 3 AM for literally no reason, TVs, dishwashers and hairdriers turn on by themselves and all sorts of other witchy things. Loud blasts of noise just occur randomly in my house all the time and I'm not the only one who has heard it. Some of these are literally like a loud siren with no origin and my security cameras pick it up every time. If it wasn't for that and other people witnessing it, I'd sincerely think it was just me.

Of course there's a logical explanation for all of it, I'm sure, but the fact that I don't have one makes it kind of fun.

Also, one time I was taking a picture of some random crap using one of those AI ghost apps (circa 2014) that was supposed to superimpose dumb little orbs and stuff into the picture to try and freak my wife out. Well, on one occasion it put this crazy fuzzy, giant black mass of a creature underneath a garbage bag and I thought, "Wow, I didn't even know this app could do something so complex. This is awesome".

Turns out, yeah. It doesn't do that. It does white orbs. I'm glad I don't live in that house anymore

I once had a weird experience when I was about 14. I had a very small bedroom with shelves opposite the door about 7 feet away. I had various things on the shelves including a little black and white TV and nearby a small tin that used to contain sweets but at this point I just used to put change in there or little bits and bobs.

One day I went in to my room, closing the door behind me and as I walked towards my bed I heard a loud bang from the direction of the door. I turned round and and looked at the door and something was on the floor making a rattling sound. I looked down and saw the tin that had been on the shelf rolling to a stop.

When I looked at the door, there was a 3 inch crescent shaped dent towards the top near the hinges!

The tin fit perfectly into the dent. Somehow when I entered the room, the tin had leaped off the shelf and hit the door with enough force to put a pretty large dent in it.

I've thought about it often. At the time it made the hairs on my neck stand up! The best explanation I can think of after years of trying to explain it is that, at the time I had a pretty hefty Dinky Toys Star Trek Enterprise toy/model on top of my TV. It's quite a weighty and it's biased towards the front of the ship. It's made of die cast metal. On the bottom of the "drive section" is two doors that normally house a small plastic shuttle craft, but usually if you open these doors out you can use them as a stand to display the model.

I think what probably happened is that it tipped over and landed on the tin in such a way that it catapulted the tin at the door. In my slightly shocked state I may not have noticed that it had fallen over and may have only noticed after the event that it wasn't on top of the TV.

That's the best explanation I have. But I still don't know for sure lol!

 

[Lysholm]

@Outdated Your tree thing gave me bogus nightmares.

I dreamed this large tree outside my house suddenly dropped a bunch of branches, but then started growing limbs back like The Thing in John Carpenter's The Thing. The new branches were wiry and gooey and flailing, then it started grabbing and eating stray cats. When the tree couldn't get to me it grabbed my pickup and threw it at me instead.

That's all I remember, though. But this is why I don't drink or do drugs: I don't need to.