Inspiration Strikes

Have you also had those times when you have wrestled with a problem to no avail? A reasonable solution escapes you for a long time and the problem becomes irritatingly passionate with you. Then a moment of inspiration strikes at an odd time. With me, it has happened several times while I was taking a shower.

This week it happened again. We have this new TV and I was having trouble getting the cables hooked up correctly. You see, we have a vcr and a dvd player/recorder that also have to be connected. But Rho and Tuell helped me get everything working so well that we were able to make dvd's of the Discovery Channel's Planet Earth program.

Then I messed everything up. Some of my colleagues at work told me that I could get HD tv on the local channels with a $40 antenna. That way I could watch HD programs without having to pay an extra monthy fee to the dish company. Of course, I could not get the HD signal unless it was on a local channel, but that sounded good to me. So I went to Best Buy with the book that came with our TV, and quizzed a salesman about it. I bought one of the units, and he showed me how to hook it up, even writing the instructions in my book.

Nothing works like it is supposed to, does it? When I got home, the place where I was supposed to attach the cable from the antenna already had a cable attached to it. So I disconnected that cable and attached the antenna. The HD picture on CBS came in BEAUTIFULLY! Also on ABC and NBC. FOX did not do so well, but I had already been told that would be the case. But if I wanted to watch the TV using the dish, I had to disconnect the antenna cable and rehook the cable that was previously there. Aaargh! It worked, but it was a pain.

Several days later I took a shower late at night and the solution hit me. I wondered why it had taken me so long to figure out such a reasonable solution. The next morning I hooked the antenna to the place I was told, and took the other cable completely off. Now when I want to watch the TV using the dish, I use the dvd port. Everything works fine. You see, we ran the dish through the dvd so that we could record the unscrambled signal before it reached the TV. If I switch to the TV port, I get the antenna signal, which does not go through the dvd recorder. My recorder cannot record HD signals anyway, so no harm done. Life is good.

The reason I had the extra cable, it turns out, was so that I could watch the dish signal without going through the dvd recorder. The cable effectively by-passed the dvd recorder. All clear? Well, that's the news from Abilene where all the TV signals are clear, all the radios are loud, and all the college students are lazy bums.
(That, of course, is a joke.)

Look At That Smile

Taylor celebrated Rho's birthday by going to the orthodontist and having braces glued to her teeth. For quite some time she has thought that having braces would be a cool thing. Now she has them, and it is painful. She is not yet able to play her flute because it makes her lip press against her braces and causes her teeth to hurt. But she has progressed to the point that she can blow a note or two.

Some of the other consequences about having braces on her teeth are that Be is having to be very creative in what she fixes for Taylor to eat. Also we have a boat load of cleaning tools and cleansing agents taking space in the bathroom. Finally, we have to dig very deep in our pockets to pay for this torture. Is it worth it? Yes.

But in this modern age, one gets to choose colors for the rubber bands that pull on the teeth. See if you can identify the two colors that Taylor chose.