And in other TV news ...

... you may remember that I bought a new TV a couple of months ago.  Woot!  And I, cheap me, actually PAID the cable company to come out and hook it up, because I'm hopeless with that stuff.  Wires and cables and diagrams ...  time to pick up the phone and hire somebody.

And they came out and hooked it up and all was well until the first time I went to play a DVD and ... nope.  Oh, the DVD would play, you could see the timer-thingy clicking away on the player, but the show wasn't playing on the TV.  The system was not reading that there was a DVD/VCR attached.

Well.  I called the cable company, explained that they must have goofed something up when they hooked up the new TV, and requested that they send someone back out.  Which they did.  And I'll tell you what, that poor bastid worked and worked and worked, and finally got the system so it would acknowledge the DVD.  Success!

Until the first time I went to record a program, and ... nope.  The system would recognize either the DVD/VCR player or the TV, but not both at the same time, making it impossible to record a program.

Oh for the love of ...

I was NOT going to get the cable company back out there.  And I WAS going to be able to record my beloved, batsh*t crazy Duggars. (When there's nothing on TV, which is most of the time in the summer, there's nothing like a healthy dose of Duggars to fill the void.) Surely, surely, there must be a way to figure this out.  And last night it was time.

I got out all the manuals.  I got out all of the extra bits of coaxial cable wiring I had laying around.  (what?  you don't?)  I got out the flipping wrenches and pliers when I discovered that the last cable guy had evidently used vise-grips to tighten down all of the connections.

And I went to town.  Let's see ... cable in to cable box, out to RF modulator, then to TV, plug TV into cable box ... SH*T!  TV plug is three-pronged.  Grab a converter plug ... CRAP!  It still won't fit!

Okay,  Deep breath.  Cable in to cable box, let's skip the RF mod because that's probably not strictly necessary, audio/video wires from box to DVD and from DVD to TV ... F*CK!  There's no "video in" plug on the TV.  Okay, back to the manual ... hmmm ... I think I can plug the video wire in here ...

And then it was time for a test recording.  First try ... not so much.  Okay, let's see ... maybe I need to change the input on the TV to AV ...  Second try ... oh  the angels sang IT RECORDED!  IT RECORDED!

and I did a little happy hula dance around my living room.  F*CK YEAH!

It's the little things that'll make your day.  I swear.  And I sat and watched two hours of Duggars last night, happy as a damn clam.