Jimmy Rig

I have this wonderful Ipod docking station my husband bought me for Christmas in 2008 so that I could listen to music at work. You see, I only get 104.3 WOW Country to play in my office via radio and I can only handle small doses of country and practically begged for months for a docking station but was unwilling to actually drop the fifty plus dollars on something like that when I could just plug my Ipod into the computer or speakers for free. Let’s be honest though, the docking stations look pretty, and are multifunctional as mine doubles as a clock. So here I am only 13 months used, and I have a bad connection. I can’t put my Ipod into the docking station and listen to it continuously throughout the day. In particular if I set something down on my desk too hard or bump my desk with a chair it loses connection and I lose my music. It’s been doing this for months and finally I just started listening to country until I couldn’t stand it any longer. My patience finally ran out this morning and I tried several objects to jimmy rig it in place. Hi-Liters, binder clips, pens, pencils, erasers, and finally a paper weighted clock. Success! I have a fully functioning Ipod docking station until I can afford a new one.
Any suggestions on avoiding this problem in the future?

Also please disregard the terrible quality of the photos as they were taken with a cell phone.