PC TO VIDEO COMPONENT

Or, here we go again!

I am putting together a Power Point presentation for someone, and I wanted to test it on my TV, since it is such a convenience to watch it there than a lap top screen. What this means is TLW (The Little Woman) will get involved somehow, and she will send me to Radio Shack. Radio Shack is not the place I like to go to, it is like Home Depot, only electronic! Too many people, where I have too many questions, where no one really knows the answers to, nor what the question really is.

“Toots, I want to play a presentation on the TV from my laptop, do you think we can do that on the flat screen?”

Here come the dreaded words:

“Yes, but you need to go to Radio Shack and get the right wires, but why not?”

Why not? She asked me: Why not. I’ll tell her ‘Why not’, because those guys don’t know any more than I do, they just have technical terms for their ignorance, I have your basic layman’s terms for my ignorance.

“Radio Shack!?” I start to tremble, and shake and do both at once, looking like one of those pictures you saw in your history books of Shakers.

THAT'S ME, SECOND ON THE LEFT

Being how she isn’t feeling well, I decide to be brave and go myself. I get there and tell myself that this time, there will be no issues, no questions, no nothing but them giving me a wire that hooks up from my computer to my TV. I’ll say: Thank you, and pay for it, the salesman will put it in a plastic bag, hand me my receipt and say: “Have a nice day.” In which I will reply: “You too!” I will have a grateful smile on my face and walk out of the store until 2014 at the earliest.

The store is packed, and most people are looking like they have questions, with puzzled, stiff expressions ON THEIR QUIZZICAL FACES, all lined up waiting to ask. I walk around to wait for the line to get smaller, or I will break for the door screaming at the top of my lungs: “GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

I find the section I am looking for and see some wires I like, but one end won’t work on my computer. Finally I trap a worker, a walking geek of boundless lack of knowledge, who I ask: (You ready for this?) CAN YOU HELP ME? I know, I’m being silly, I didn’t really expect him to help me, only to rile me up, ask me a question I can’t answer and probably send me home with more questions and a request to take pictures of my computer and the back of my TV. I KNOW that will happen. Why? Because it ALWAYS does, that’s why.

“Sure, what kind of computer you got?”

I hate this part: “A Mac.”

“Follow me” (it’s coming,) he leads me to a computer, types into the search engine of the Internet and says,” This is what you need.” He says this with confidence, assurance and great pride that he has helped me. He also says: “We don’t carry it.”

I think: “I’d like to carry you out blindfolded to a major busy highway and ask you to stand there.”

Instead I snap back to reality and say: “I also have a PC at home. (Hah! I got ‘em!)

“Oh! What kind of port do you have to accept a VGI?” Having been ready for his next question I snap back at him with: “Huh?”

I answer back:

“I have a Toshiba.”

“Oh, do you know the size of the port to accept the hookup?”

“Huh?”

“You know, the computers all have different ports for different things?”

LEONARD

He consults with his pal Leonard from the Big Bang Theory for an opinion, and Leonard talks to him without looking at anyone, and I’m starting to feel like I’m begging a ride from someone in the middle of the Sahara Desert, do they have room for me?

Finally my cracker-jack salesman and techie says the dreaded words I’m waiting for because I’ve been expecting them since I walked into the place:

“Why don’t you bring in your computer?”

Why? I’ll tell you why you bag of gumdrops, because it means I have to get back into my car, drive all the way back home, then take the computer from TLW, under a hail of questions just as provoking as bullets and get back into my car, and drive all the way back here to this lousy shack where I don’t even see a damned radio!

I just shake my head OK and leave, sitting in my car I sob a little and drive home. TLW is waiting for me.

“What happened?”

“What happened? I’ll tell you what happened, I figured it all out. No wires, no special hookups, what I’ll do is put the disc into my laptop and play it from there! Good no?”

TLW looks at me and starts to laugh. SHE thinks its funny! We talk and somehow, I’m back on my way to the store with a wire and a computer tucked under my arm as I enter. I meet the techie salesman and his partner Leonard.

“I see you returned! Brought your computer, good!”

As he is looking at the ports, I show him the wire from the TV and he asks me a question that I think had to do with the NASA program somehow and he mistook me for an astronaut.

“Maybe you should go home and take a picture of the back of your TV? Do you have a camera or i-Phone???”

maybe I should take a picture of him when he was alive, before I stuck a CB aerial into his chest.

“Isn’t there anything you have that I could use?”

He says: “ What you need is a Composite, S-Video, YCbCR (Component) and RGB video output, with PAL/NTSC switchable VGA IN and VGA OUT for simultaneous and TV/CRT viewing is what you want. Simply stated a PC to Video component.”

“OK, wrap one up.”

See, I knew it would be easy!