In Which Your Narrator Enters the Electronic Store and Survives Somewhat Unscathed

Going to the electronics store is always something of a nerve wracking experience to me. Particularly, when I go with my parents and I have to try and explain the difference between various electronic equipment. Try explaining the difference between HD and Blu-ray to a man, my father, who still marvels at something like, I don't know, color TV. The problem is, though, that I don't quite understand the difference between HD or Blu-ray, either. And I'll admit that I do in fact sometimes marvel at the fact that I am sitting in Indiana and watching a baseball game in New York. Or try explaining what the bells and whistle of Microsoft Vista as opposed to XP are. Another admission, I really don't know. I am not the most technical savvy guy in the world. Matter of fact much of the information and knowledge I do have is probably more from osmosis than anything else.

We went to H.H. Gregg today. For the last couple weeks my mom has been toying with two decisions. The first was about a computer. She has a computer, had it for about five years. Its a Gateway and has XP. Her problem is that it has started to slow down. So she calls her in house computer guru, i.e. me, your faithful narrator, and asks me fix it for her. Well, if it can't be fixed by staring at it, or doing ye olde disk cleanup I'm pretty much useless; however, I did poke around a bit and decided that if she got rid of much of the downloaded stuff and pictures she has seems to have saved she might just be able to get the thing chugging, again. I showed how to do that and then delete the stuff. The other day she did it and did clear off quite a bit of space. She says its moving faster now, which is a good thing. This morning she announced that she had decided not to buy a new computer.

The second decision she has been thinking about was getting a new TV my parents' bedroom. That is why we went to H.H. Gregg. H.H. Gregg is a bit overwhelming. Its TV section is quite impressive and if you look closely at the TVs they have there you can see subtle differences in the picture. I learned something today. Flatscreen TVs don't have very good sound. They may have kick ass picture quality, but there is little room for speakers. We went to H.H. Gregg twice, wait three, times today. The first time was this morning, around eleven, or so. We talked to this guy name Trevor. He talked to us for about a half an hour and we decided to get a TV by a company we'd never heard of before. So we took the TV home, plugged it in and I got it programmed to get the TV stations. Turned it on and started to watch it. The picture was good, I'll give it that, but the sound... oi, or to quote my mother "it sounds like they're talking into a can underwater," and my favorite "that's not how Paula Deen sounds." So, she called H.H. Gregg which turned into an exercise in patients. We took the TV back to H.H. Gregg and ended up buying a Samsung, I think. It was more money, but the sound is wonderful and the picture... oi! You can see the extra money in the quality of the TV. The old adage of "you get what you pay for" did, in fact, come into play today. Now, I'll just have to learn how the TV works so I can explain it to my parents, particularly my mom. And yes, Paul Deen sounds like she's supposed to: brassy southern belle.