Posts from — July 2005

A few weeks ago a new branch of the evil coffee empire opened here in DeKalb. I went there on the day it opened and received a $3 gift card with my purchase. Sweet.

I left the gift card in my new car so that it will always be handy for my next visit to the evil coffee drive-thru. Having visited this fine coffee establishment many times now, I’ve not only drained down this gift card, but 2 others that I’d been given recently. The gift card I left in the car had about 30 cents left on it, if I remember correctly.

So, the other day, Suzanne and Jeffrey went to the evil grocery empire for groceries. When they returned home, we let Jeffrey play in the Element for a few minutes while we unloaded the groceries. He likes to push all the buttons and move the windshield wiper lever. Note: Don’t call DCFS on us or anything. We don’t leave the keys in the car and Jeffrey’s mother and I are never out of sight or more than a few steps from the car when we do this.

Now then, Suzanne and I are carrying in groceries and Jeffrey is happily cranking the windshield wiper lever back and forth. I also notice without concern that he’s picked up the Starbucks card as I walk away. When I return a few seconds later, I hear the unmistakable whir of a CD being loaded into the slot-loading CD player.

The boy looks at me and I notice that the Starbucks card is gone. I begin to think. Hmmm….. I wonder if he just loaded my Starbucks card into the CD changer? I hit eject, nothing happens. I try to load another CD, nothing happens.

Anyone know how to remove a small plastic card from a slot loading CD player?

UPDATE (3/15/06): I’m getting ready to make a long 24-hour drive to Florida. I took the car, which still had a non-working CD player with a Starbucks card in it, to the local Ann Arbor Honda dealer. This visit was for routine maintenance items: change the oil, rotate the tires, check the brakes, and everything else you want to be sure of before taking a long trip. I asked the guy about fixing the CD player. They wanted over $200 to extract the card, which I was tempted to do, but they would have removed the whole radio and left me tuneless for a week. Well, I’m leaving Friday and there’s no way I’m leaving without a radio and a way to listen to my iPod. So I said no deal.

When I picked up the Element today after the dealer’s maintenance work, I saw a straw sitting on the floor near the passenger seat. I felt a surge of MacGyver blood rushing to my head, giving me an idea. I picked up the straw, took off the paper wrapping, and started probing around the inside of the CD slot while pressing the eject button. To my delight, I saw one corner of that Starbucks card poke out and I quickly grabbed it. I put in a disk, to be sure it still played, and was soon grooving to the dulcet tones of Wynton Marsalis (requires iTunes). So our long automotive nightmare is over.

Two more interesting notes: First, the straw I used to extract this Starbucks card came from, wait for it…. Caribou Coffee. Second, the Starbucks card had 73 cents remaining as a balance. I used this money to buy a celebratory decaf coffee.