Apparently I Have A Dinosaur In My House

Today a friend brought a videotape over that was in bad shape and she wanted me to copy it to DVD. She gave me plenty of warning that the tape was in bad shape and I should proceed at my own risk. I stuck it in the VCR and hit 'play' and sure enough, it got eaten. No big deal, I got the tape out. I rewound it and tightened it and tried it again. But I pushed my luck too far and this time the tape got stuck and broke. It came out easily enough BUT, other tapes wouldn't play in the VCR anymore. They would start to play, then the VCR would eject them and shut down. The tapes wouldn't even fast forward or rewind. So I took it apart and checked the tape movement mechanism and used some compressed air to clean it out. No good. The tapes just would not play. So I figured I would go to Wal-Mart and pick up a new VCR. Well, apparently VCRs are a thing of the past. You absolutely cannot find a stand-alone VCR with a TV tuner. Gone are the days of setting your VCR to record on a certain channel at a certain time. They are all DVD combo units or you can only record off of the channel you are watching on your television. (I haven't taped a show in years - we Tivo everything. But we do copy VHS tapes to DVD and it is good to have a working VCR around.) They just don't have built in tuners anymore (due to the FCC ruling that all new video tuners be digital which is cost prohibitive for VCRs). So I went to eBay and there were none there either! Crazy! So I was determined to fix the newly designated Hale Family Heirloom. I went back in and disconnected different ribbon cables and re-seated the internal connections. It still wouldn't work. I wound up putting it back together and then relied on the tried and true method of technology repair - I banged it hard on every side with the palm of my hand. Popped a tape in and it works fine! Now that relic has taken on priceless fossil status and has taken a place of prominence in the living room.

But the original old dinosaur had a good night at basketball tonight. We only had 10 out but I was feeling really good. I stretched my back quite a bit and it didn't bother me at all. The glucosamine that Jasmine the golden retriever and I share every day has really worked wonders for us. No knee pain at all for me and I played pretty well at both ends of the court.

Ashleigh won her JV field hockey yesterday. She scored a goal and her team won 4-0. They are 2-0 on the year which is a good start. Elliott got his basketball league application the other day so that will start up soon.

Today we got our first cable bill since we got the new package. Chock full of errors and overcharges. $125 worth in fact. I called them and got everything resolved pretty quickly so I was happy with that. But about an hour later, my email and web page was shut down. I thought it was a cable company problem so I went to hoops to give them time to fix it. I could still surf the net and go to various web sites. When I got home, I still couldn't get to my site or email. So I called them back and quickly came to realize that my lack of access was no coincidence - they had 'moved' my service after I called about my bill and had to re-register it all (whatever that means). The service rep kept telling me that I was not 'targeted' but sure enough, anything related to my account was disabled. So he reset my internet modem and then our phone cut off (we are on cable phone service now) but the service rep got that going and called me back. A few minutes later, I was back online and now the service rep can never again say, "I have never heard of that happening..."