Man versus Technology

I am not at all technologically savvy. Plugging stuff in is about as far as I usually can get. So why, two days after Christmas, did I decide to attempt to tackle the universal remote my wife bought me last Christmas?

It's not completely my fault that the universal remote didn't get immediate attention. She bought it for me before we had our new TV. And there was an assumption that we'd upgrade to a receiver or some kind of cool sound system. That didn't exactly happen in the year since we've been in the new home. We still have the old DVD player and Wii that we have to plug in one at a time because the old models have the red, yellow, and white cables and our new LED TV only has one set of plugs. It has tons of HDMI plugs but so far we've used one slot.

I had to dig through three cardboard boxes to get to the remote. It seemed simple enough. There was a charging station on which the remote sat. My first problem is I didn't see where the power cord plugged in. It was in a nearly invisible nook on the underside of the remote station. Every time I've put the remote into the station it goes white for a second and then nothing happens. I turned the switch on the bottom of the charging station so it shows white. I think it's supposed to be green when the remote is completely powered up.

So the remote may or may not be charging. That's like step negative two. I put in the CD that's supposed to have the software that you install into the remote, telling it what all of your devices are and the magical combinations to get everything to work. The CD did nothing. It was supposed to start the software. I opened the CD's contents on the desktop and nothing opened and nothing worked. I went to the product's Web site and downloaded the software that way.

At this point my wife thinks the odds of me succeeding are about the same as the Titans winning the Super Bowl this year.

My next step is to record the model numbers of all of my devices. We have a Samsung TV, a Wii, a Sony DVD player, a Visio Sound Bar, a TiVo and a receiver that probably will not be used. I wrote them down, but can I read my own writing?

The software starts running. Page one shows a mother-of-three type holding a remote looking happy. Her husband probably set it up. I'm not saying that women are incapable of mastering technology. It's just the people most happy with technology are the ones who don't understand the inner workings.

I sign my 100th consecutive software license agreement without looking at a word of it. One of these days we're going to sign away our organs to an evil genius.
I had trouble plugging in the USB cable that connects to my remote. Yeah, I had trouble figuring out where that plugged as well. Hey instruction people, show us where things plug in rather than poorly explaining where.

The software continues. Funny how when this process continues, my brain feels softer. Yeah, I know, bad joke. Oh, look, I have to create an account. Can you imagine trying to explain to a 12-year-old kid in 1955 about Internet logins and how it's going to be impossible to remember all of the passwords? That kid would pray for immediate nuclear winter.

I have to suspend my work as I think the remote needs to be charged before it can plug into the computer. I don't think I'm even up to step one yet.

The wife sensed my distress and during the following day, she input all of the "devices" into the computer and it loaded onto the remote. The remote now knows more than I do. The hardest part of fine-tuning the remote was having the computer upstairs and the TV downstairs. It would ask for the steps it took to play a DVD, for example, and I'd have to go downstairs and mock them and bring the remotes upstairs so I could remember all of the button combinations.

I went downstairs with the darn thing and pointed it at the TV. It worked. I even got the DVD player to work. I had to suspend our watching of John Adams because I plugged in one of the cables incorrectly. I had taken the cables out when pulling the DVD out to see the part number. At least I figured it out, although it was a much longer effort than necessary.

It's a pretty remarkable piece of machinery. I'd prefer it if it would load the DVDs and Wii games for me, and if it would rub my wife's feet I think I would be completely obsolete.