I arrived home last night to see my wife waking up on the round (TV watching) couch in the livingroom.
"Hello, Love. I couldn't get the sound to come on. I tried and tried. I went up and down all the options in all the lists I could find. Nothing worked."
"Did you try turning everything off and waiting for a minute?" I asked.
"No. I didn't think of that."
"Remember a couple of weeks ago, how I was fuming at the stupid system, because I couldn't get the sound to come on. And Conrad said that you can get it to come back on if you just turn the receiver off and wait a minute."
I demonstrated. And got NOTHING!? WTH!!! I immediately went into fuming venting mode. She nearly left the room. But was caught by wanting to know what would happen next. I was trying things.
Ejected the movie. Put in a CD. Nothing. Looked in vain for my "Sur. Decode" options amongst the Yamaha sound programs. That took over my angst; the "no sound at all" shifted away for the moment: because I had a difficult enough time working out the hand control and displayed options in the beginning, I didn't need to NOT see what I had learned to expect.
"I just want to smash up the whole stupid mess," I muttered, more than half serious. My whole body was twitching at the delicious thought, the imagery conjured up by fetching my bec de corbin and going to work on everything electronic (and the collateral damage of the furnishings).
"Please don't," my wife said quietly, offering the programmed response to my emotional rhetoric. It's an old exchange that we have.
Finally I turned everything off, aaagain. Except the TV; that was my on-screen information source. I brought up the DVD home screen.
"I never saw that," she said.
"You're sure? That's the first thing to come up when you turn on the DVD player." She was sure.
I tried the radio. Voila! Sound.
And everything was fine now. "Sur. Decode" was right there where it belongs. I selected "Dolby PLII Movie". We put in the movie and finished it.
Why, why, why, do electronics these days crap out so often, and in inconsistent ways? This never happened in my father's time…………………..
