This Isn't Helping

It’s a well-known fact that, to put it mildly, I really don’t like people.
In fact, if there were a Wikipedia entry about me there would be an entire section devoted to this fact.
Having to do my shopping on weekends isn’t doing anything to help improve my opinion of the greater mass of humanity.
Back when I first moved into the house I’d made a trip to Lowes, and while there I found a TV stand that I liked, but for whatever reason I didn’t actually buy it.
On Thursday I got my first paycheck – which was substantially larger than a typical AOL paycheck – and decided that I needed to do something with that money beyond simply paying bills.
So, with last weekend’s addition of a new audio/video component, I thought now would be a good time to check to see if the TV stand I liked was still there (my existing stand isn’t especially roomy, even without a TV actually being on it, and is rather bowed from years of having my old, heavy TV resting on it). I got there and discovered that they no longer had the one I wanted, but they had another that I liked even better, and which was nearly half the price.
The only problem was that the stand consisted of individual components that had to be purchased separately, and from what I could see one of those components was out of stock.
Naturally no one is around to help when you actually want someone to help, and every time I tried to look in other areas my efforts were stymied by the efforts of the International Conspiracy of People Who Congregate In Front of Things That Jon Wants To Look At (ICPWCIFTTJWTLA), all of which led to a marked increase in my rage levels, so, rather than shove some lady out of my way, I clenched my fists, gritted my teeth, and walked out of the store empty-handed (or rather, empty-fisted).
From there I went to Wal-Mart. Care to make a guess as to whether that made matters better or worse?
Beyond being a catalyst to get me to go out in search of a new TV stand, adding another audio/video component also increased the number of remote controls in my arsenal. A few years ago I bought a programmable remote that can “learn” the functions of other remotes, but it never worked very well at controlling a DVR, and the “teaching” process was rather long and laborious, so I decided to pick up a Logitech Harmony 890 Advanced Universal Remote, which you hook up to your computer to program.
Whenever possible, I like to buy “open box” products, as people generally return things because a) they bought the wrong thing or b) they couldn’t figure out how to work it, so the savings are generally worth whatever risk there is that the product may be faulty.
So I was pleased to see that there was an open box Harmony 890, though I was confused when I looked at the price tag and saw that it was marked as being $15 more than an unopened box. WTF? The sales person told me that this was restocked before a major price drop, and would, in fact, be over $20 cheaper than an unopened product.
So that worked out, but I was still in a pretty lousy mood.
Driving home didn’t do anything to improve my mood.
Once I got home I called Kathleen to see if she wanted to get lunch, but she had something else going on, which is probably just as well, considering that the following lyrics by Tool pretty much summed up my mood: Some say the end is near/Some say we’ll see Armageddon soon/Certainly hope we will.
Not wanting to deal with the world any longer, I took a two hour nap, then got up to attend to the programming of the remote.
It was all pretty straightforward, and I now have one remote that, like the One Ring, can rule them all.
The one area where I’ve run into some difficulties, though, is in setting up “activities.”
It’s possible, for example, to set a “Watch TV” activity, which will allow me to push one button and have my DVR turn, my TV turn on, and have my TV switch to the appropriate HDMI input.
The obstacle to this is that the programming for my TV’s remote is not an exact match, so the list of inputs is incomplete and in the wrong order, so as it tries to set it to HDMI 2, it scrolls through the inputs and stops on S-Video, or some other random input.
It would be possible to tweak the settings to fix this, but honestly, I’d rather it didn’t try choosing the HDMI input at all and simply turned the TV on –if I watch a DVD or something on the Media Lounge I usually switch back the HDMI input when I’m done anyway – but there isn’t a way to get it to not try to change the input (that I’ve been able to find), so I haven’t bothered trying to use the activities feature.
I may mess with it some more on a day when I’m feeling less volatile, and possibly even set up a custom wallpaper on the LCD screen.
I’m thinking this might be appropriate.
In any case, sorry for the infrequent nature of my posts of late, but I’m still adapting to the whole working a) at all and b) more than three days a week thing.
Besides, you’re not really missing much.