Sunday, May 16, 2010

A New Age For Coaxial

I insisted I would be the one to set up my parents' TV.  Dad is old and cranky and knows little about today's technology.  I knew he would have Mom running for the hills if I let him set up that thing.  Dad works nights, which is good because I was able to set it all up without him over my shoulder.  I told Mom if he were home while I did this, she would have to keep him away from me.  If he hovered, I would leave.

I love my dad, don't get me wrong, but he can really drive me nuts sometimes.

On his way to work, Dad picked up the TV from the store, and we shoved it into my Mazda 3 with the back seats laid down.  I made the thirty minuet drive to my parents' home sweating the whole way.  I was really scared stupid someone would wreck me while I carried my parents' new $800 television across the highway.

This TV really is a nightmare because it has only one coaxial connection.  I'll spare you the details but I had made two trips out there, one to a local TruValue store (that was unnessary, the clerk lied over the phone), back to my parents house....

It was a little miserable.  When the local channels went digital, Dad put the new antenna in the attic, EVEN THOUGH they have a thrity foot tall antenna pole in the back yard.  Because they could reach local channel Fox, he set up rabbit ears.  I had to hook up the satellite box, DVD player, VCR, outside antenna, rabit ears....all with only one coaxial connection to the back of the TV.

Don't ask me how I did it.  I got it on the second trip after I'd brought some things from home, from my stash of cables, cords, and whatnot.  I'll tell ya this much, I probably couldn't do it again.  But they get Fox and Dad can watch NASCAR so everyone's happy.

Mom.  My dear mother offeed to pay me for all of this.  "Don't be ridiculous!"  I laughed.  She just went on about how Dad would be cursing after spending hours on it and how she appreciated it.  "I'm doing what grown kids do for their parents!  You don't have to pay me!"  I never gave them grandchildren; it's the least I could do.

Dad didn't help though.  He had unconnected everything and really, to be fair, he was trying to help.  He labeled all the video cords and coaxial cables for where they coming from and where they were going.  One coaxial cable was labeled "AA" and I assumed this stood for Analog Antenna.  No.  No, no.  HA HA!  the piece of tape labeled AA was for the satelite dish!  Ah, that's my dad.  Of course, it's always been easier for me to strip everything and start from scratch.  Though it is helpful to know what the cables coming from the floor and the ceiling are atatched to.  AA.....HAR HAR!!!!!!

And some point, on my first visit, Mom is saying to me, "You don't have to do this, I am sure Dad can figure it out."
"No he can't," I said flatly.  "There's too many things to hook up, and not enough places to put them.  He'd be throwing a fit.  I don't mean to sound ugly, but I don't think Dad would get this."

What helps me is that I've done it about a hundred times between moves, moving furniture, and accepting secondhand furniture.  I've hooked up so many gadgets through a VCR, a member of the Geek Squad would be proud to see an original Nintendo, Xbox, cable TV, and Super Nintendo all going at once.  (you only need to change what is plugged into the strip, of course)

So far, the TVs have treated us well.  The only complaint I have is the lack of coaxial connections on the rear of the TV.  And the fact that I cannot record using that TV because there's no where to connect both the VCR (or even a DVD recorder) and satellite on the same line.  A DVR would work, but seriously, we need speakers first.


Gonna be a while on those speakers.  Shawn has decided to build a trike in the garage.  His welder went out today so he's off to the store to buy a new one.  He says he could probably sell this trike for around 3 grand or so once the NOS is connected.  Sigh.  Why do boys always have to make their motorcycles go the speed of light?  Excuse me.  It's a trike.  Not a bike. 

We Did a SIlly Thing

About a week or two before the computer went out, we did a silly thing.

For about a year, my parents' television had been acting up.  They'd had the thing for twenty years or something so it was time.  I did some extensive research on flat screen TVs and came up with a Sony Bravia 46" that had amazing reviews and came in around $800 online through Best Buy.

There's more.  Shawn has been drooling on himself and down the front of his shirt for years over the Sony Bravias.  He does apartment maintenance so he regularly goes into people's homes who have such massive televisions.  And to makes things worse, most of these people are those who do not work, do not have jobs and are living on our dime because they are too cracked out to go earn a living.  Not all of them, but most of them.

Shawn has always thought it unfair that he works so hard each day and could not have one of these TVs.  On his lunch break, he used to go up to the Circuit City and stare at the Sony Bravia 50" TV.  He'd them hook up the HD and just foam at the mouth.

After discovering that the TV was only $800...not over $2000 like the like one he'd wanted originally, I finally caved.  I could really care less about the TV.  I could care less if we'd continued to use the sixty pound dinosaur or got a flat screen.  I just really don't care.  A TV is a TV and that's all there is to it to me, personally.

I was shocked at the prices of TV stands.  We finally settled on one for around $300 I think, and it took Shawn about 3.5 hours to put together.  Now this I like.  We had this HUMONGOUS entertainment center my parents had second handed to us and it took up most of the bedroom.

That's right, the bedroom.  Our main TV viewing is in the bedroom.  You cannot watch TV in the living room past 10am because whoever designed this house was a idiot.  We went to Best Buy with my parents and I haggled the manager down from store price to online price.  One problem.  They didn't have the TV in stock.

There was only one within a 60 mile radius, the other was ordered for my parents since we had already moved the beast of an entertainment center down the hallway and had built a new one for the bedroom, all ready to adorn our new television.

This really was an all day event.  We started sometime in the morning and wrapped up everything around 9 or 10pm.  Dad would have to pick up his TV that following Friday and that's a whole other story.  After we set up the TV, I to work on the surround sound system.  We discovered that only two speakers were working so we found an extra we'd stashed in the den and hooked that up.  The rear speakers were blown long ago and Shawn tried rewiring them, etc, but nothing worked.  Like I said, they were blown because someone around here like to listen to his music at blaring volumes.  (He's also going deaf as a result)

Speaker issues somewhat resolved, I finally got everything hooked up and going.  We had three front speakers and that was OK for now.  Two days ago, one the front speakers went out and we have no more reserves.  Sigh.

I'd done some extensive research on decent speakers that will work well with our system and sustain Shawn's horrible music.  Of course, we cannot afford them at the moment so I've simply tucked away all this information with a plan to buy one at a time in the near future.

Next, we needed to contact Dish Network about getting set up with High Definition TV.  I ordered a 30 foot HD cable to run from the box in the living room to our brand new flat screen TV.  That night, I called.  Dish Net would charge us $150 for setting up HDTV because we need a new box and a cable guy to go up on the roof, pretend to do something, and serve us with a bill.  This was another several-hour experience and I don't know why.

Today, we are operating on one left front speaker, one middle front speaker, and no HD.  Oh well.  At least Star Wars looks cool on DVD through this TV.

More PC Garbage

I was able to obtain an enclosure for my old XP hard drive. It seems to be just fine.  Except for one thing.  Well, a few things, really.

I had spent hours making a video made from scenes of that old TV show, Titus.  It was set to Puddle of Mudd's "Psycho" and was perfect!  It was hilarious and matched to the music perfectly, scene by scene.  It was pulled from YouTube long ago because Warner Bros. had a hissy fit over my using the song "Psycho" but I never cared because I had it safely tucked away in my hard drive.

Or so so I thought.  I cannot find it.  I spent two or three hours looking into each folder of the drive, I ran search after search.  It isn't there.  Did I burn it to a disc?  Not sure.  I have a stash of DVDs of videos I had made.  Hadn't checked it yet.

The handful of photos that were on my PC--gone.

I also had dozens of Word documents.  Short stories, neat little things, recipes, things I had written.  Also, gone.  Cannot find them anywhere.

I have spent much time emailing people, visting forums, etc.  No one can really help me with this.

I also have an external hard drive, for storage.  It's 20gb monster with ALL of my photos--every photo I've taken in eight years.  And every CD we've ever owned and resold, is contained within that drive.  So, as you can only imagine, I was quite nervous to plug it in.

Ureka!  I was able to view all my photos, all my music is present!  Whoppie!  We have The New Testament on CD and I had been ripping it and putting it on my MP3 player to listen to at work--you know how I've complained about how boring my job is.  It's wonderful to have something different to listen to and it helps pass the time.  I cannot fit the entire New Testament of The Bible on my 1gb memory card so I figured I stow the ripped discs on my external drive so I wouldn't have to continuously rip the CDs over & over. 

Naturally, if you been following along, you know this can't be an easy task.  I had a nightmare trying to get the PC to recognize the drive again.  It will not accept anything new, no matter what it is.  The drive was no where near the old XP when lightening struck, so I have no idea what is going on.  After another full week of messing with this tupid device, I've decided that I'll just get another that will work with stupid Windows 7 and Windows Media Player whatever-version-it-is.

Given all this, I had been pretty upbeat until the last few days.  I hit a wall and fell hard.  I spent most of yesterday crying and today, my eyes are STILL swollen.  Gonna take an extended break from all of this hard drive business. 

I'm a PC.  And my brain is fried.

The PC Fried....My brain is fried

About three weeks ago (?) a thunderstorm hit us and the power went out for about two hours.  That power outage resulted in the deep frying of my computer.  I changed out the power box--whatever it's called--and nothing.  I returned it to the store.  Since changing the power supply does nothing, this means the mother board is fried.  Many local PC repair folks told me so over the phone.

Bugger.

I bought a new PC which doesn't come with Windows XP, of course, because everything electronic changes and needs to be "enhanced" aporximately every fifteen seconds in this world.  Even today, I am still learning where everything is on the Brand New To Me Windows 7.  Although I must say it is easier to navigate than had been told to me about Windows Vista (*shutter*)

About a day or two after setting up the new PC, the monitor went out.  Bugger again!  I quickly switched out the monitor with a 1987 Special, forty pound reserve monitor I had int he back room.  Just in case, you see.  That too went out within 24 hours. 

My boss had two dinosaur monitors he didn't need, so I took one and brought it home.  The next day, Shawn insisted we buy a new flat screen model.  Sigh.  Naturally, that turned out to be an all day event.  New monitor in place...guess what happened the next day?  Sure.  You guessed right.  No pictured when I turned it on.  For some reason, Divine Intervention, perhaps, it occurred to me to turn off the brand-new-just-bought power strip before I turned on the PC.  This is something I had to do whenever there was no picture.  Had to turn it off somehow.

I noticed that without touching the power strip, the computer didn't beep.  That morning, before I touched ANYTHING at all, I switched off the power and turned it on again.  I turned on the PC, the monitor, and sat back, holding my breath.  It beeped!!!!!  I had my computer staring right back at me from the new monitor!!!

This was all within a week.  Within that week, I was exhausted, staying up late to get everything set up, researching what I needed to pull info from my old XP hard drive, etc, etc, boring, blah, blah.  As it turns out, one night I was trying to get the cat out of the house, so I filled her bowl outside with dry cat food.  This trick always works at bed time.  I went to put the container of cat food away and simply placed it into the refrigerator.  Oh, double sigh!

This week had not been a good one.  Ten minuets after I arrived at work one day, I ripped my jeans right down the front leg.  And wouldn't you know it?  Shawn had been in school so I hadn't shaved in like a decade.  I couldn't hide the fact that I had Wookie legs.

At some point, I had dumped solvent-based sizing all over my shoe and had to walk around barefoot until my shoe aired out so it wouldn't turn my skin to a Hazard Level 3.  And....you really do not want to be walking around barefoot at work.  Trust me on this.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

I have not been around for a week

I am grateful for my one regular reader!  It means a lot to me that someone out there enjoys what I write, even if it is sometimes quite depressing.  Our computer was fried (yes--fried) a week ago in a thunder storm so I have not been able to write, much less think straight. 

This is gonna be a looooong story.  A lot has happened in the last week and I even have little notes in my purse where I'd jotted down depressing events and funny happenings, such as the moment when I was so exhausted I fed the cat and to put the cat food away, I placed it in the fridge.  (it's a large container filled with dry food.  No need to refrigerate--that's just silly)

There have been issues at work, home, my parents' home, etc.  It'll most likely be at least a two-parter.  I'm writing this now to let my one reader (hi!) know I have not fallen off the face of the earth (yet) and will be writing all of this very soon, I hope. 

I do hope to get some writing time in within the week.  Stay tuned for this train wreck.