Monday, February 06, 2006
When June was here a couple of weeks ago, a group of female family members were at my house and, for some reason, I got to telling them about the washing machine I had in Christchurch, New Zealand.
We had taped me doing the wash there so I showed it to them.
That was a fast 20 years but that is how long Christchurch is behind me and it showed on the video tape. The 20 year old VHS tape had degraded more than I would have thought.
I gave some thoughts to how to preserve these records and decided I needed to transfer them to DVDs.
I bought a DVD player/recorder at Best Buy and brought it home.
This began my acquaintance with different kinds of cables and connectors. RCA, S etc.
I wanted the connections to go cable-VCR player-DVD player/recorder-TV.
After hooking things up, I could watch cable TV, watch a video tape, watch a DVD, but I could not play a VCR tape and record it on a DVD. The connections were wrong; I needed a different kind of cable between the two.
The back of the DVD player/recorder had 15 different places to connect to; the VCR only 4. On the VCR one connection was the regular cable connection. The other three were like the RCA cables but they were different colors, not the regular blue, red, yellow ones.
I thought and thought about it, went to WalMart and bought different connections, brought it home, and after thinking more about it realized it would not work.
Jerrell used to talk about machines being smarter than he was. I found that to be true with the DVD player/recorder. It is smarter than I am and I would never be able to figure out how to connect it.
I returned the connections to WalMart and the DVD player to Best Buy. Instead of the DVD player/recorder at $100 I bought for $300 a combination DVD player/recorder and VCR player. The advantage is that the two components are already connected together.
It worked. I was able to record on DVDs the New Zealand tapes.
Then I decided to do my Leslie Sansone walk exercises and could not find the DVD. I had left it in the DVD player that I had returned.
Best Buy has a lot of salesmen on the floor but after you have picked out something and you are going to buy it, the customer service vanished. You have to stand in line to check out. If you return something, you stand at the empty return counter for about 15 minutes before someone helps you.
But that is better their phone service. After remembering where the DVD was, I called the Jackson Best Buy store to ask them about it. First you get a recording that gives you about ten choices of extensions. Don't get excited; that is just to fool you more. When you press the number the extension will ring 10 times without anyone answering. Then you get the same choices again from the recorded voice. It allows you to push the appropriate button again and letss you hear it ring another ten times. You can do this as long as you want.
I went to WalMart to buy the new machine. At least they are honest and make no pretense of having good custormer service.
We had taped me doing the wash there so I showed it to them.
That was a fast 20 years but that is how long Christchurch is behind me and it showed on the video tape. The 20 year old VHS tape had degraded more than I would have thought.
I gave some thoughts to how to preserve these records and decided I needed to transfer them to DVDs.
I bought a DVD player/recorder at Best Buy and brought it home.
This began my acquaintance with different kinds of cables and connectors. RCA, S etc.
I wanted the connections to go cable-VCR player-DVD player/recorder-TV.
After hooking things up, I could watch cable TV, watch a video tape, watch a DVD, but I could not play a VCR tape and record it on a DVD. The connections were wrong; I needed a different kind of cable between the two.
The back of the DVD player/recorder had 15 different places to connect to; the VCR only 4. On the VCR one connection was the regular cable connection. The other three were like the RCA cables but they were different colors, not the regular blue, red, yellow ones.
I thought and thought about it, went to WalMart and bought different connections, brought it home, and after thinking more about it realized it would not work.
Jerrell used to talk about machines being smarter than he was. I found that to be true with the DVD player/recorder. It is smarter than I am and I would never be able to figure out how to connect it.
I returned the connections to WalMart and the DVD player to Best Buy. Instead of the DVD player/recorder at $100 I bought for $300 a combination DVD player/recorder and VCR player. The advantage is that the two components are already connected together.
It worked. I was able to record on DVDs the New Zealand tapes.
Then I decided to do my Leslie Sansone walk exercises and could not find the DVD. I had left it in the DVD player that I had returned.
Best Buy has a lot of salesmen on the floor but after you have picked out something and you are going to buy it, the customer service vanished. You have to stand in line to check out. If you return something, you stand at the empty return counter for about 15 minutes before someone helps you.
But that is better their phone service. After remembering where the DVD was, I called the Jackson Best Buy store to ask them about it. First you get a recording that gives you about ten choices of extensions. Don't get excited; that is just to fool you more. When you press the number the extension will ring 10 times without anyone answering. Then you get the same choices again from the recorded voice. It allows you to push the appropriate button again and letss you hear it ring another ten times. You can do this as long as you want.
I went to WalMart to buy the new machine. At least they are honest and make no pretense of having good custormer service.
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