New Stuff

Sometimes new stuff is fun, like when you get a new book or some new yarn to play with. Sometimes it's not quite so fun.

I just spent 90 minutes putting the new DVD player/recorder in (bought because my old one tried to eat a DVD, and this one records VHS tapes onto DVDs and I'm hoping to salvage some of my very old tapes, including all my Dr. Who tapes. Except I've read you can only record 2 hours worth onto a DVD before the quality starts going south, and almost all my video tapes were recorded at 6-hour speed, which is a good thing or I'd have more tapes than I do now. This is progress?). It's the kind of thing that's so much easier when (a) you've got someone to help and (b) you don't have cheap stuff. I discovered the shelf holding the CD player/radio was propped up on books because, apparently, the weight of the CD player broke one of the shelf-support holes on the cheap (and old) entertainment center. I can't do that with this machine because I've read that these recorders run hotter than machines that just play DVDs, and I need to leave more air space above it. I hope the new shelf placement is sturdier than the old one. Maybe I can find some boards to slide in on either side, in lieu of books. And, needless to say, I'm very nervous about plugging both it *and* the CD player into the same extension cord, but there's no help for it--the TV has to be plugged in somewhere. Yes, I would so love to have this house rewired and have more outlets installed.

It's more difficult when you have to wear your glasses to read the labels on the back of the equipment so you know which wire goes where, and because of where the entertainment center is, you have to face a bank of windows, so the light reflects off your glasses, which makes it hard to read the back of the equipment, so you have to use one hand to hold a flashlight and do everything else with the other hand--and squint. I keep meaning to get one of those LED lights you can strap on your head like a miner's lamp so I don't get into such fixes.

Because of the rearranging I had to do, I'm having to cram my CDs in beside and on top of my CD player. I know you have to be careful with videotapes not to get them around electrical equipment so you won't erase them, so I'm hoping I'm not going to erase or otherwise damage my CDs by having them so close to the CD player. There's a 2nd shelf, but I can't use it because I don't have any of the right size shelf supports (it's the one that was propped up on books). And I couldn't put the CD player where I wanted to put it anyway because--oh, never mind. It's complicated.

I'll have to stick a DVD in to see if I've got the TV hooked up right. The only cable I could find was an old-fashioned co-ax cable, and this new unit doesn't have that kind of plug-in. But there's an RCA cable outlet marked "video in" on the front of the TV and an RCA cable outlet marked "video out" on the back of the DVD player, so I used the RCA cable that came with the player and have hooked it up to the TV that way. Hope it works...

One good thing is that in moving all that stuff, I could get behind it and give everything a good dusting. Now I can try and decode the user's manual. I should go buy groceries, but it's sunny and nice out, a welcome change, so I think I'll take the Ts out, then order a pizza tonight. I can buy groceries tomorrow.