Technology

To teens, these days, technology is a common every day thing. They know how all these new gadgets work and think nothing of it. Well.. for this "older than teenage years" lady, technology is something to be bargined with. I have finally come into the 21st century and upgraded my cable box to one that includes a DVR. (I was missing far too many shows on TV.)

After 20 minutes of looking at the string of cables going from the TV to the old box and trying to figure out where they go on the new box, I gave up and called my 17 year old down from his techno room to help me. He politely pointed out that the new box would use the new cable that came with it. The old cables stayed with the old box (which he was taking to his room to hook up.. by the way). In about 3 minutes (probably less), he had it up and running. Whew! That was done.

Or so I thought..... I hit the button on the new remote that came with the new box. The box came on but not the TV... NOW WHAT?? My son says.. "Mom you need to program the remote to make it work the TV." (What ever happened to Plug and Play???) I grabbed the instruction book and found the page to program the remote and decided this would be a snap.

Or so I thought..... I quickly realized this was not going to be an easy task. Putting in commands and hitting this button and that button. Hold the button until it flashes twice. Well, I did finally manage to program the remote to turn off the TV and the box at the same time, with the hit of one button.(after an hour and 2 hot flashes of my own!) I was almost there.. soon I was going to be able to sit back, relax and watch some TV.

Or so I thought.... About that time, I then realized the sound was much too high.. so I hit the volume down button. The little scale on the TV came on and showed the volume going down.... BUT IT WASN'T! It was still much too loud, nothing was happening with the remote volume button. By this time I was getting angry with the new remote and the new box! I was ready to take it back to the cable company and tell them to keep it.

I did not want my son to think I was completely bonkers and could not even do the simple task of getting a remote, a TV and a box to talk to each other. There was no way I was going to call him back down from his room to help me, yet again, with this simple machine for my TV viewing pleasure. I did the next best thing... I grabbed the remote to the TV and it turned down the volume.

The easiest part was recording.. that was simple. Pick the show, hit select on record. Done :)

I will no longer say a word or even think of one, when I see people with two or three remotes in their hands to get their TV just the way they want it for the evenings viewing of shows. I am now one of them!!! I sit on my sofa with 2 remotes and 2 cats ... now if I could just get my son to stop playing his Playstation games on my TV I could actually watch some of those shows I've recorded. ;)

(eventually I'll let my son know I didn't quite get it all done.. maybe he will feel sorry for me and take care of that little problem)