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Letters From North America |
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Now the fact that you are reading this gives me an indication that you are somewhat literate, otherwise you wouldn’t understand what I am saying. Does that make any sense? Well, I think it does. What I’m trying to convey to you, is that I consider us to be fairly intelligent people, since we can obviously read and write and have the capacity to understand certain things. At my age, I feel like I’m keeping up with the world in general. I can operate a computer, I can type, and I can add and perform calculations with a calculator. I can even balance my own checkbook. No big woo for being able to do these things. I’m sure most of you are able to do likewise. While most of our modern day devices such as computers, microwaves, thermostats, coffee pots and toasters have gotten simpler over the years, …there is still one daily piece of household gear that tries my very soul. The VCR. I am still living in the dark ages trying to figure out how to use what button to record something on channel 5 and watch a program on channel 14 at the same time. The BOOK says it can be done, but I’m fairly certain they are lying to us. Last year I went out and bought a new one. Gave the old one to my boys. I think they now have 4. All of them work. All of them play and all of them record. Baring any major changes in VCR technology, they have a lifetime supply of VCR’s. They can probably pass some along to their kids in 30-40 years. I can just hear them now..”Yep, this GE, model BR549 belonged to your granddaddy. He gave it to me in 1999, fresh from the box, never used; remote still has batteries in it. This is a family heirloom”. Now, I went out and bought a new one last year. Since I don’t watch a lot of movies, I haven’t really fooled with it all that much. Oh, I could play something the kids brought over to watch, that was rented from the movie store. So what’s the big deal? Well, last month, there was this English series on that I wanted to see. So, I crank up the VCR, put in a new tape. Set the channel to where the program is and leave it all alone. The next day, I rewind everything and lo and behold, what do I have …yep, 4 hours of static. Nothing remotely resembling a movie. So, I decide I must have done something wrong, so I get out the instructions. I know I am lost when I read….”To record one program while watching another…Engage the TV mode, then during recording, press the TV/VCR indicator until the indicator light goes out. (If you are using the RF connection (see page 6) to view the output from your VCR, the TV broadcast being recorded disappears. If you are using the AV connection (see page8) to view the output from your VCR, change the TV’s input mode from AV to TV.” I am not making this up. These are actual directions. I’d like to hear from some astronaut, as I don’t think flying the shuttle is this complicated. They might as well print these instructions in Arabic, since they make absolutely no sense to me at all. Having failed at trying to get the one I have in the house to work. I go to the store and buy another one. You can’t see or read the instructions BEFORE you buy it and take it home (clever marketing) so I ask the salesman…”Is this thing simple to program and operate?” Of course he looks at me as a steady repeat customer, and says..” Oh yes, sir, any child can do this.” Well that scares me off. I don’t want one that a child can program. I want one that a maturing adult can operate. I ask the same question in the next store and the salesman tells me that this is the model that I want. Old gullible me buys the new one, rushes home, unwraps it and hooks up all of the cables and guess what? Nothing, Nada, zip, zero. So, I call some guy in the yellow pages to come over and fix it for me. In the meantime, one of my sons drops by and spends about 10 minutes with it and gets it to working fine. I forget about the repair guy until he shows up the next afternoon. Rather than sending him away, I explain what happens and he comes in and hooks up the TV through the stereo for better sound, splits something or another to give me better reception, and the ability to tape some of the premium channels and gives me a bill for $76. Says that the more boxes that get added to these things, the more complicated they become.” Used to be just the TV. Now we have TV, cable, stereo and the VCR. ” He told me that the toughest step to getting these things working is to make that first call. Kind of like AA or Gamblers Anonymous. Oh, yeah and he also weaned me down to one remote instead of three. I’ll save $76 bucks on batteries alone. Never be too proud to call for help, I always say. Only took me 25 years to do it. I’m a better person. |
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