Unlimited Possibilities?
TELEVISION. IT’S A MIRACLE. IT’S A CURSE. I love it. I hate it. But one thing I don’t do is hook up all of the equipment and cables.
My wife, the lovely and electronically wizardlike, Dawn, does all of that.
That’s OK by me. She is good at it, enjoys deciphering the gobbledegook instructions, and she doesn’t burst into flames like I do in situations like that.
Our Cable TV System – They call themselves “Spectrum” now, which doesn’t mean or accomplish anything other than help people forget that they used to be “Time-Warner,” decided to upgrade their system to “All Digital.” To be honest – I thought they did that several years ago, but what do I know?
We have three TVs in the house. Only two of them were hooked up to “cable boxes” – why the third one wasn’t I don’t know. It’s all voodoo. But now, according to Spectrum, we now needed all new cable boxes – for each set. OK by me.
The Spectrum offices are only about a mile from us so we gathered up all of their junk and went there to do the swap. There was a line of other people trying to do the same thing. A long line – an out the front door of the building line. We had already had lunch and Dawn had a fresh Dr. Pepper so we were in it for the duration.
The line moved along rather quickly considering that every Meth-Head in town seemed to be there paying their bill and wondering what day it was. The young lady behind the counter was still in a good mood, but heading toward the ultimate contemplation of murder/suicide. In less than ten minutes we had all of the new gizmos we would need and a new viewing plan that will save us $40 a month.
Once we got home with all of the new junk Dawn stepped up and I became the fetch and tote guy. I know what I’m best at.
It took about an hour and a half to get all of the sets hooked up and working – sort of. It did take one phone call to the “Customer Service” line and a couple of system reboots to get TV #1 to acknowledge that there were two other sets in the house.
Once all of the basic voodoo protocols were in place came the waiting for everything to download from Spectrum to our end of the cable connection. We used to get about 50 channels of which we watched about five. With our new fancy-schmancy all-digital set up we can now get about 300 channels of which we will probably watch about…five. A number of the new channels can fill me in on Hispanic, Chinese, Filipino, and Venusian culture. There are many other channels that we will have to explore. I’m just not sure why we, here in Indiana, are getting the programming from the Brigham Young University in Utah.
This morning I picked up one of our brand new remote controllers and lit the entertainment fuse of the upstairs cable box. While I was trying to get my socks on their proper feet I punched in three numbers at random – sort of Spectrum Roulette. I was a big winner!
(FANFARE) At 5:44 AM this morning I was tuned into “The Cowboy Channel!”
Holy Kemosabe! I was watching an episode of the Lone Ranger! Clayton Moore! Jay Silverheels!
This was a good way to start my day.
I wonder if they show, “Have Gun, Will Travel?”
I think I’m gonna like this new arrangement.
Down the Hall on Your Left 
You were a big winner in that, John. Several years ago some friends took us to Branson, Missouri–mostly to listen to their preferences in live country music! But while we were there, we got to tour the (alas, now-defunct) Roy Rogers Museum. It was worth the whole trip!
LikeLiked by 2 people
And Wagon Train. I loved that show with Ward Bond.
LikeLiked by 1 person