Friday, May 21, 2010

Help! My Husband is Taking Over The Electronics!

It started with the computer. He used to go on once in a while. He would check his e-mail, look at ESPN Deportes or listen to music. Now? He has discovered eBay and eBay Motors. He is ordering parts left and right for his truck. He is bidding on auctions. He is checking his email every five minutes for updates on his bids. He is posting ads on Craigslist. He is watching videos on Youtube. He has his own Youtube account! He has a Paypal account! I mean, it never ends. And me? Well, my computer time has gone way down. WAY DOWN. Sigh.

Next was the DVR. Which? Is hilarious considering he refused to even learn how to use it when we first got the service with our Comcast account. He used to get so angry when there were multiple recordings going on (Jacob is the series recording whiz) and it would kick him out of what ever program he was watching. But then? His passion for soccer took over and he began to ask us (because he didn’t know how) to record his games for him. And, of course, we would (one of us) have to start it for him too. One morning he got up early and when I came out to the living room after waking up the kids, he was watching one of his recorded games. “Ha!” I said. “What?” he asked. “You know how to work the dvr! You started this game on your own.” He just laughed. But I made the point that he was not to use us anymore to record games or shows. Just the other day I was watching tv and the message popped up that two shows were being recorded and that I would have to change the channel to one of the shows being recorded. When I looked up what was scheduled, it was two of his recordings. I got bumped out of my show! Unbelievable!

But the last straw. THE FINAL straw was the GPS. That was mine. That thing has made my life so easy. No more getting yahoo directions. No more google maps. No more getting lost. He took it out of my car a few weeks ago so he could find some place where he was picking up an engine. He only had it one day. ONE DAY! And here is what happened: I was taking Alex to his soccer training which was out of town and about an hour and-a-half long drive. We had been there recently so I pretty much remembered how to get there. But just in case I pulled out the GPS and asked Alex to go to the “recently found” menu and look up where we were going. He began scrolling down the list but couldn’t find it. He read off address after address, but none were the one we were looking for. What the heck? Where did he go? Why so many different addresses? In just one day? How many "recently found" addresses will the GPS remember before it starts deleting them? I began to panic. Then? He did, thankfully, find it at the bottom of the list. When I put it up on the window holster the audio wasn’t working right. Now what? It sounded jumbled, like when cassette tapes used to get stuck or go bad (Showing my age here). It wasn’t even the same voice as before. The more I listened to it, however, the more I realized it sounded like a different language. “Is that French?” I asked out loud. They didn’t know. On a hunch I grabbed it out of the holster and asked Jacob to play around with it and see if he could find a language option. After just a few seconds he found the option and announced that it was currently set on... get this... Afrikaans. WTH?
How does that even happen?