Electronic Problems Get me Charged UP!

You know that video I sent out awhile back about the little old lady trying to change her converter box? I made the smart alecky remark about that being my mom? Well, I better eat my words, because that little old lady is ME!!!

I've spent a friggin' hour this morning trying to get one hooked up to the little tv in my crop room.  When I took it out of the box and saw the remote control, I knew I was in trouble. We've been having problems with our remote to our sound system for a month now---and you can't watch tv without it. It's so darn frustrating.  I came home after the Celine Dion concert to the television blaring.  Butch had gone to bed.  I fought with it for at least 15 minutes before just unplugging the darn thing. We couldn't get it to turn off or adjust the volume.  It has been so aggravating---sometimes it works, and then sometimes it just won't respond.  This weekend, I asked Butch to put new batteries in it. He said that he'd checked the batteries with our "cheapo" battery tester.  I asked him to humor me as I don't think the stupid battery tester works.  He replaced the batteries and presto, chango, the thing works again.  

I just told that story to let you know that we are electronically challenged to begin with, so anything remotely complicated is darn near impossible.  The kids can attest to that as we really "wig out" when they push a bunch of buttons and get the remotes (3 of them) all screwed up.

After getting all the wires hooked up properly (of that I was sure), it came time to program the remote control.  The directions were so darn small that I had to get my mega stitching magnifiers to even see the print. The first thing to do was to select your tv brand and the corresponding 3 digit code.  There were at least a hundred brands to choose from.  Being that this little tv is so old, the brand was not listed.  The alternate instructions (if you did not have a code) was to hold down the power button and press the "up" button once every second until the tv shuts off.  If it doesn't shut off after holding and pressing 105 times (yes, you got that right, 105 times---hell, what's with that little extra "5"---seems like 100 should be enough), then hold the power button and press for another 105 times the "down" button. OMG, I nearly lost it. Here's the "rub".  There are TWO power buttons.  Have you ever seen a ****** remote with 2 power buttons? Of course, the directions did not specify WHICH power button to use. Sooooo, I had to do the whole friggin' thing TWICE.  That's 420 presses and all the counting that goes with it. A couple times I got confused and wasn't even sure what number I was on.  None of it worked.  The instructions said that if that didn't work, then I had to go through each of the 3 digit codes to see if any of them would work. If that didn't work, then there was a special note at the bottom in microscopic print that says: "apparently, this tv is not programmable."  

Oooookkkkkaaaayyy.  I start down the list of the 3 digit numbers.  Once I got to about the 6th one, I lost my place.  After doing a couple of them twice, I said to myself, "f*** t*** s***" and planned to go out and just buy a new tv.  I kept thinking, this is ridiculous that you have to have the remote to make this thing work.  The tv has to be on channel 3 now, so using the channel selector on the tv is not an option. I'm getting madder and madder.  Then I notice that there are 3 buttons on the actual converter box.  One is the power---easy enough to see as it's slightly raised---and 2 other buttons with up/down triangles---flat to the box and just etched (if you know what I mean---barely visible). I pressed one and voila' the channel changed. Why in the heck was there no mention of those buttons in the instructions?

All of that hassle just so I can watch "Antiques Road Show"! 

So, my big question---If a man can walk on the moon, then why can't we have SIMPLE electronics??