Keeping It Together

Needed, techie 15-year-old

Do you know any 15-year-olds I could borrow? I need to tune in my new TV but it is getting the better of me. New DVD player may need hooking up properly maybe, too.

I have the DVD playing through the TV but I can't get the TV to work independently. Fifteen-year-olds are very good at this sort of thing but I don't know any. It is a bit too up-to-date techie for us older people.

Is this my subtle way of asking if I could get some help?

(Short Version)

Without a 15-year-olds help I am going to work my way through the User Manual, page by page, with the TV, and the remote control in front of me.

If I can't get it sorted in the next few days, I am going to go back to the dealer and ask them to arrange to have someone come and sort it out for me.

(Long Version)
If I were being subtle that would have been way too obvious. No, I did not intend to be subtle. It is just that I need to borrow someone who is 15-years-old.

I have found that 15-year-olds 'know everything' - and are really quite techie minded. Since this is quite new technology this would be something that they would find easy to do.

My daughter got it to work through the DVD by tuning in the DVD player to TV, so I can watch TV and DVD's through the DVD recorder/player. She has rigged up my VCR to the DVD. I can also use the DVD player to watch live TV and use the play back feature and pause live TV, too.

I took the Operating Instructions for the LCD TV to work, to read during my break, therefore I have read it right through. It seems to say that I have teletext but I can't get it going. It seems to say that the TV screen tilts but I can't tilt it. And I haven't got the TV tuned in to pick up TV independently from the DVD player/recorder. AND I want to link up my Xbox too.

I realize that I could probably do it myself but I seem to be in denial and I get quite angry at the stupid thing when it doesn't do what I want/expect it to do. I actually knew this would be a problem which is why I resisted getting a new TV and DVD player when my old VCR packed up (the antenna thingy broke) and when I bought the new DVD player it wouldn't rig up to the very old TV. So I went back the next day to buy a new TV to go with the DVD player. I probably just need to reread the book over and over until all the bits fall into a frame of reference so that it eventually makes since to me.

Now, I sit and pout, and behave all defeated. Instead of pulling my finger out, doing what has to be done, and working my way through the book, page by page, with the manual and the TV and the remote control in front of me.

It is coming up to four years now and I am still letting this denial beat me. My mum would tell me to just get over it, that I am just being stupid (she is not a particularly sympathetic type of person). Getting this stuff now (just before Christmas) was a mistake since the Christmas season always brings up feelings of grief. Mental not to self - don't buy TV's VCR's DVD's or Games just before Christmas. You see my son, would do all this sort of stuff, so I never needed to tune in a TV or connect up TVs and Video, and I never had a DVD before he died. When he died I found that I was lost, faced with these plug in, tune in problems. I miss him terribly, and just fall apart emotionally, when faced with stuff I am left to do, when I still need him to do them for me. Now he has died and I feel helpless and alone and defeated. Our children are not supposed to die first.

How do people manage who don't have their adult children to help them? I suppose I could go back to the dealer and ask them to arrange to have someone come and sort it out for me. Now that is actually a great brainwave. If I can't get it sorted in the next few days, I might just do that next week.

Now I depend on my daughter (who is busy with her own family). She helps with everything in my life that I need help with (I don’t know what I would do without out my daughter). Then I rely on others who happen to be around at the time, but then I would never be able to stand on my own two feet (so to speak), and there are so many things in my life like this, that I feel keeps defeating me, so I need to find ways to spread my dependency around and avoid relying on the same people all the time, for help when I can't (or don’t want to) do things on my own (which has been quite often lately). Since I don't wish to live life isolated, I reach out. Instead of being independent, I allow myself a little inter-dependent in order to hold my isolation cocoon from crushing me.

I have managed without asking for help outside the family up until recently and so I can manage without asking for it now. It just doesn't feel right to keep depending on someone else when I should be taking care of these things for myself.

With my anti-social work hours I don't have a vast array of friends.

So for now, I am going to face my demons. Work my way through the User Manual, page by page, with the TV, and the remote control in front of me.

Hopefully I won't completely stuff it up trying to sort it out myself.

(Up Date, the next day.)

The DVD/TV is finally mastered. I wasn't letting that little bit of modern technology beat me.

I work my way through the User Manual, page by page, with the TV, and the remote control in front of me, and had some success. I went to bed at dawn. TV is tuned into the number channels that I want. I found that by putting the Antenna directly into the TV I was able to tune in the TV and work the teletex. I found that I need a cable and an antenna/double-adapter to hook up the antenna directly to both the DVD and the TV in order that the TV will work independently (I may have both left over in my sons box of tricks which I will rummage through today) or get from Tandy's tomorrow.

I am learning to do quite a lot of things on my own. It is quite liberating. Perhaps it sabotages potential transient friendships by being too independent, but weighed again wasting other peoples time and effort it is better that I manage alone.

Now I look around at other techie stuff to begin to master.

Getting up to date with technology.