The Machines Are Coming!

I've shared this picture before, but I use it again because it speaks of my feels towards modern technology - occasionally. Our home computer has been out all week after a short power outage or surge last Sunday night. It caused our cable Internet connection to - evidently - fry. The cable fixer-upper was scheduled for Thursday between 1 and 3 in the afternoon - BUT - they would call twice prior to that, and if no one answered the phone the repair visit would be automatically cancelled. So, how soon before the 1 o'clock time would they call? And why schedule a time to be home for the repair, if you have to be there to cover the phone? Well, no big deal. I came home for lunch and they called while I was finishing off my microwaved soup. Then I thought, I can still use Word on the computer even if the Internet is down! DUH! I did - working on the final scene of next years play. BUT - I could not make that thing save the file to the same CD I brought in home on! Long minutes where spent trying to figure out how to do it. I couldn't even find the crazy program that I know we have that lets us burn CD's. Oh well, after it was fixed, much later, I sent myself an email with the doc. as an attachment so I could pull it up at the office and save what I had done. See, I have learned something.
The cable man did his thing - put a new cable box on our machine and it worked like a charm. It seemed good to me (sounds biblical doesn't it?) to ask, "Hey, while you're here. Can you change out our DVR? It's really been acting up lately and I thinks it's bout to go out." He was more than happy to do that. Nice guy! BUT - I forgot how EVERY cable fixer-upper has a terrible time trying to figure out how to hook things up to our TV. It took him much longer than he had planned. I almost invited him to stay for a microwaved soup dinner. He finally got it up and running and the new DVR is great. I just had to program all the shows I usually have recorded into the new box - Jeopardy was first. BUT - I noticed that the wide screen picture had three inch black borders top and bottom - like watching a movie, except it was regular TV programs. Ha-ha! This happened before and I knew I could figure it out. Wrong. Two hours of reading every word on every page of our giant TV manual and pushing every button on everything and even a few things that weren't buttons - no luck. What was wrong with our crazy TV? Exhausted and frustrated, I picked up the control to the cable box and began scrolling through some of it's index of capabilities. One said Wide Screen Set Up. I clicked on Extended Wide Screen and presto - I had a full wide screen. Who knew it was a cable thing and not a TV thing?
Okay - there's a great lesson there somewhere, but it took too long to tell the story. So come up with your own. For now 1) I'm a techo-idiot; 2) User-friendly is a relative concept (my relatives can do it but I can't); and 3) Maybe machines will one day take over the world - they certainly know how to push my buttons.