Common Ground
A homeowner in Waukesha for 20 years, Steve is president of the Waukesha Dog Parks Organization and enjoys motorcycling, fishing and staying on top of politics.
New TV. Old Problems
So I come home from work Friday night and am enjoying watching Jim Cramer tell me how easy it is to make money in the stock market. I hear some snap crackle and pop. I know we don't have any rice crispies in the house but it could be a toy of the dogs that makes a crackle when they bite down. Problem is, Kanook is outside and Minnie is in my lap.
Shortly, I see the picture flicker with each crackle and pop. Pat walks in and comments on a burning smell. After pulling the plugs to the TV, cable box, VCR, DVD player and stereo system, we jump in the car and are off to the local big box TV store in the area. This set was around 20 years old, fixed once and I long ago said that when something goes wrong with it, I'm not spending anymore money on it.
The intention was to just replace the TV with a flat screen of about the same size as the old one. Keep it cheap. I needed the money to invest in what Jim Cramer suggests every night. After looking at the rows of TV's, we ended up spending around six shares of Apple stock on a high definition set packaged with a BlueRay home theater system. Did I mention that we've watched about a half dozen movies on our DVD player in the last ten years? However, it's entertaining to watch the dogs react to the booming bass from the subwoofer.
From the beautiful store, we are armed with our stamped receipts and directed down the road to the warehouse. It's nearing the 9PM closing time and rather dark when we pull up to a dimly lit truck dock. Suddenly we feel like we are in some alley downtown in the big city, waiting to transact some nefarious business deal. A push of a call button and a warehouse worker takes our papers with a grunt and lowers the overhead door, saying he'll be back in five or ten minutes.
Loaded up and heading home, I anticipate the work ahead exchanging devices. The hardest part is assembling the new stand which comes with about one hundred screws and directions as clear as an IRS tax form.
So you want HD TV? We have Time Warner cable and have seen about a billion commercials extolling that they have more free HD channels that the dish companies and at no additional charge if you have digital cable. True. However, we found out that our existing cable box is not for HD, so that required a trip to West Allis to exchange it for an HD box. Next are the special cables. You may have heard of them. They are special for HD and expensive. I needed two of them. On top of that, one of my sons who was helping out hooking things up said that I needed an optical cable too. So that all was one trip to the cable company for the box and three trips for three cables. The credit card is getting hot now. I'm hoping that Apple stock begins to rally.
The TV is more than I expected. This thing even connects to the Internet via our wireless router so it can download the greatest videos of YouTube and other services. I'll pass on that, for now. Also more than I expected are remote controls. After all these years of technical advances, I still have three remotes to fiddle with to orchestrate the whole mass of modern media. It makes me pine for the old black and white TV from years back where you got up and clicked to either channel 4, 6 or 12 and left it there.
So maybe in another 20 years they will finally master the technology of combining three remote controls into one. Or better yet, a system that works on telepathy!
Can't wait for the Packer preseaon games to begin!
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