Technology

This is more about the ongoing "trickle down" technology we are all exposed to over time.






How do I start this? Basically in 1998 and 1999 when I was forced to retire at age 50 to stay alive at that time I sort of thought at that time. "Well. I almost died for 7 months now what?" The "What?" being the operative word in my life at that time. So, after reading tech manuals for almost every computer, cassette recorder, video recorder, tape recorder, transistor radio since the 1950s which is what my father taught me to do since he was an Electrical Contractor like his Father, I finally got to the place where I said to myself, "Well. Since I'm probably dying soon I'm going to only learn a modicum of stuff about each new technology I buy or have access to while traveling or visiting friends. This idea has served me well except for the part about dying which I may not decide to ever do. Who knows after being retired since fall 1998?

Anyway, I sort of relied on my son who likes to custom build computers for gaming and Internet so they are sort of custom Ferrarris or Rolls Royces of the Computer world. So, it was my thought that, "Why should I read every tech manual like I used to when I can just ask my son who is really smart in regard to eveything tech? Which worked great for awhile whenever he visited or was living nearby. But now he lives out of state and somethings can't be easily talked about because tech sometimes is completely hands on.

For example, we were gone 3 weeks to Oregon, Washington and Canada. So, somebody had gotten all cleanly and dusted my tuner that runs Hdmi 1, Hdmi2, hdmi3 and hdmi4 which are different channels I use on my flatscreen (one is cable tv, 2 is the PS3 for blue ray dvd's and games, 3 is regular dvd's and 4 is the roku puck for streaming netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and every other type of service like that using the Internet to stream onto my big flatscreen in the living room. My daughter, 17, pretty much only looks at Youtube, Netflix and Amazon prime like most of her high school friends now and only watches  cable TV about 10% of her free time when she is home or less after finishing all her high school homework.

Whereas my wife and I only watch netflix about 10% of the time or less including Amazon Prime. However, we find we can electronically rent and stream new movies pretty inexpensively from Netflix or Amazon Prime within a month or so after they first come out at theaters.

But, because someone had been cleaning while we were gone our stereo set of speakers with surround sound wasn't working right and because my son is the best trouble shooter in the house (but has moved out of state) he's not around to trouble shoot the system and I haven't been wanting to fix it bad enough. So, instead I play through the widescreen TV's speakers only. He said the tuner can run sound either through the TV speakers, the stereo external speakers throughout the living room or it can do both at the same time. I finally figured out how this works but still haven't got the external speakers working right yet. So, I listen to the TV with the TV's speakers or I plug in with earphones and run the sound through the external speakers conduits to have the room be quiet except for the earphones. But, eventually I will have to check the connections to all the speakers from the TIVO to the tuner to try to find out what is wrong with the external speakers around the living room. This sort of thing would have been a no brainer if my health was better than it has been but since I'm retired and my present work around is working so all people in the house aren't upset I'm not going to worry about it for now until I get ambitious. Like people often say, "If men lived by themselves we all might still be living in caves." So, life goes on.