I wasn't able to update my literary blog last week, as I had an appointment with my cable/internet provider to get set onto a new contract. This also meant that I had to schedule an appointment to get new tech this morning. The time was initially somewhere between eight and noon. However, the cable guy arrived around 7:30 (What!?!? I know. They never arrive early.). Anyway, it took two tries to find a new 'Google assistant' that would connect the television to the new cable service. I personally think that someone inserted an extra letter into the contact email, and that mistake led to the difficulties, but who knows what could've really happened. Anyway, I now will be getting cable service over the internet, linked by the assistant. Among the many new features provided by the updated service is DVR storage up to 100 hours per month free. This also means that I no longer need to use my VCR. In fact, I can't see any way I could connect the two together. I have been using VCRs ever since I got my first one in ninth or eighth grade for Christmas. I was actually with my mother when we picked it up. She gave a cover story that it was a gift for a relative, when it was actually going to be my gift. I don't know if the original story was true or not, all I know is that I ultimately got the VCR. (My mother has done this to me before. One Christmas, I got a pair of pajamas that I know were originally for a male relative who died a few weeks before Christmas. They were too big for me, and I never really grew into them.) At first, I barely used the VCR, until I discovered that it had an adjustable tuner. Now, my television back then only could pick up channels two through thirteen. It was an older model. However, with the help of my VCR, I. could now pick up all of the other channels beyond thirteen, as long as I watched them over the VCR. Sure, there weren't that many back then, but I could place them in any order I wanted, making watching faster. This was especially useful when the cable lineup was expanded when I was in college. I could even get the scrambled channels, although I couldn't see much. The television lasted longer than that first VCR, and my second one still had a tuner, just not one I could adjust to the way I wanted it. The old television would finally give out, and the new one could get all the cable channels without using a VCR, but I was still recording through newer models until I got my current one in 2003 after the last big flood. This one wasn't as flashy as the older models, but it has been working fairly okay with only a few hiccups. First, there was the switchover to the new digital cable system. While the VCR worked the first few days afterwards, I found out that it no longer had a directed tuner that could work with the new signal. This meant that if I wanted to record multiple shows on different channels, I would be forced to pick just one to record on the channel I left the cable box on. That sucked, as I was forced to forego many programs during the day just to get to see the one I wanted most. Then, I was forced to purchase off-brand cassettes as stores stopped carrying and manufacturers stopped making the ones I liked. I was thinking about changing to a disk DVR while I was out of town, but I was still unsure. By the next time I looked for one there, they were no longer carried. Only the hard drive models with monthly fee were available. I didn't want to pay for such a service, so I stuck with my VCR. I had to find a repairman to fix a problem with the power connections. It wasn't easy, and the man was kind of sketchy and out-of-the-way, but it worked again. Finally, I had to buy a new set in 2020. This model didn't need to use the cable converter box, the second iteration of it, but that meant I couldn't use the VCR. I found a workaround, but it meant using the cable box remote exclusively. Speaking of remotes, I had to buy a replacement remote for the VCR (and the old television) a few years ago, and that remote started to have buttons that didn't always work, such as "Power," "Stop," and "2." That last one was hard to deal with, as it made programming new shows to record tricky and changing the time and date after a power failure next to impossible. That's a minimum of three 2s. I was lucky I could get that button to work well enough to keep things working. For the last few months, the cable box remote was also not working right, with at least seven buttons not working at all. Just last night, while looking for all of the equipment to return, I found the second box and remote. This second remote worked fine, and I used it for the last day of the old cable box. Turns out that they only wanted the convertor boxes. The remotes, cables, and packaging, we could throw away. Anyway, just before I left, I programmed the assistant to record a show. This evening, I will know if it worked and watch the show. If/when it works, I will rewind my last cassette and finally disconnect my VCR. Even at my most, I was only recording fifty to sixty hours per month. For the past few year, this has gone down to about twenty-five to twenty-six hours, well under the 100 hour limit. In another month, this total will go down by twenty hours, as the program I was watching the most ofter, Days of Our Lives, will be leaving network television to stream exclusively on Peacock. As of now, I don't think I'll be able to watch it, but that is the topic for another post.
TO BE CONTINUED
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