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Technically challenged household

By MICHELE MILLER
Published September 10, 2005

It's the top of the ninth; the Red Sox are beating the Angels by three. Mike Timlin is on the mound, closing at Fenway after Hernando homeboy Bronson Arroyo managed to settle down and pitch through the eighth.

I'm watching at home, crossing my fingers and hoping the Sox will win this one so they can hang on to a four-game lead over the Yankees, when suddenly, Timlin's next pitch is obscured by our satellite provider's "scheduling reminder."

A blue rectangle with a tiny white stopwatch now covers most of the television screen, informing me that at any given moment the channel will be changed to something my 9-year-old daughter programmed into the remote control.

As Red Sox fans know all too well, being up three in the ninth in no way ensures a win for our team. It's still a nail-biter.

And I'm missing it.

I let a few choice words fly as I scramble to find the clicker so I can push the "cancel" button and continue watching the game instead of something on Nickelodeon called The Fairly Odd Parents.

"Hmmm," some of you might be thinking, "could this be one of those subliminal messages?"

Sorry to disappoint, but, no.

The DirecTV debacle, as I call it, has gone on for quite some time now, proving as a colleague pointed out, that some of us have just enough technical knowledge to make us dangerous - or at the least very, very annoying.

It was weeks ago, when in a moment of summer boredom, the 9-year-old decided to permanently program all her favorite television shows into the remote - even the ones that came on long past her bedtime.

The sudden channel changing happened to her father a few times during some very important viewing, including NASCAR, before we finally informed him that the television didn't really have a mind of its own. We had some fun with that, but eventually taught him how to use the "cancel" feature, which he has since mastered, a feat in itself for a man who cannot yet retrieve his cell phone voice-mail messages without assistance.

I poke fun at the man-of-the house, but know I shouldn't.

While the rest in our family are perhaps more technologically evolved, I have to admit that none of us, even the semicomputer savvy teenager, can figure out how to deprogram the television remote control.

Read the directions, you might advise. That's an idea - if we could find them.

Check online for directions. That's an idea - but a virus has attacked our computer and won't let us go anywhere we want to.

So take the computer to a techie and have it fixed. That's an idea, but then I'd have to admit just how technically challenged I really am to someone who could seriously lighten my wallet.

Besides, I'm much too busy these days trying to figure out how to operate my new microwave that comes equipped with a multitude of features, which aside from popping popcorn and reheating leftovers, are truly wasted on the likes of me.

And currently I happen to be a little preoccupied with figuring out what's wrong with my car door locks, which as of late cannot be controlled by my newfangled remote or the handy-dandy up-down power button on the door's inside panel.

So what do I do? I asked my husband, who, being an auto body technician, has some real knowledge about these kinds of things.

"Push the locks down manually - with your hands," was his suggestion.

"But what if the remote won't open the locks? What if I can't get in? "

Well, he offered with a chuckle, "Then you can just use your key."

Duh.

[Last modified September 10, 2005, 01:22:18]