Susan's Scribblings the Blog

I get the hinkies with my converter box.  It sits on the television pretty well because my so-yesterday set is still running well, so I have no reason to go out and buy a skinny flat screen and have no place on top on which to balance the box.  The scary part is the front of the box; sometimes when I turn it off it has one little light shining a bright path across my carpet, sometimes two.  What’s with the “One Light, Two Light, Green Light, White Light” thing, anyway?

Recently Comcast changed the On Demand menus and didn’t seem to actually make much of an effort to tell the customers about it.  Suddenly the realm of options to scroll between screens had disappeared.  Would I be stuck in one menu hell for all eternity unless I turned off or unplugged the set?  By chance I happened to see one of their coming attractions segments in which a helpful lady explained that you can return to previous menus by pressing the “Last” button on the remote.

That’s when I discovered the “Last” button on the remote.

Apparently, along with the lessening of American jobs, helpful instructions seem to have also become a premium.  When you get a manual with a product, it’s 100 pages long (20 in English, another 20 in Spanish, and others in various European dialects or Asian characters running vertically and horizontally).

I really don’t think I’m too old to be hard to instruct via a manual.  I also don’t believe that everybody out there can operate every function offered by a product the minute it’s outside a box, unless they are proud parents of a third grader.

At least the converter box provides some pleasant auxiliary lighting when the television is off.