I Will Not Be Deterred

I'm apparently in "I Will Not Be Deterred" mode -- it generally happens with misbehaving electronics and is the sort of thing exemplified by the night I hang a UHF antenna off a chopstick because, dammit, I was going to make this work.

In addition to finding the rabbit ears, I also found a DVD player. Had some laundry to fold so figured I'd watch a DVD. I don't have the remote, though. While I had wanted to pack all of the remotes with their related components, my mover thought he'd be all helpful by gathering the remotes together and ... putting them someplace. Still haven't found it.

So, I loaded up the DVD player, hit "play" on the player, and saw me a TV show. Of course, now I'd like to watch the next episode and the DVD player does not have the "down" button on it, so I can't make it play the next episode. Dammit.

No problem. I'll find where the hell the mover stuck the remote controls. How about this box labelled "TV Components"? Nope; no remotes there -- just a couple VCRs and a few other things I'll have to hook up once my DISH is back in business. How about "Misc. Living Room?" No. That box has a snowglobe in it and ... what's this box? It's a "Studio Nova" box -- they made my dishes. But there aren't any dishes in it. (I'd tried packing the dishes back in their original boxes and couldn't make it work, so the mover just used his Dish Pack boxes.) But what's in the Studio Nova box, then? Remotes??

No. It's empty.

The man packed an empty dish box.

I checked every other box for a label that would suggest the possibility of a DVD remote control. Hey! What about this box? It's in my "office," stacked among about 15 other boxes that say "office" on them, but this one has no label. It's ... more pots and pans. Yeah, that makes sense. I generally cook in the office.

What about this "miscellaneous" one? It looks promising, in that it has lots of power cords and chargers, but no remote controls.

Hey. Wait a minute. Every piece of electronic equipment you bring into your house wants to take over every piece you already have. Meaning that, while my DISH remote control is completely useless in terms of actually giving me satellite TV, I should be able to reprogram it to control this DVD player.

And, sure enough, I can. (Amazingly enough, it was the first of several codes listed for that manufacturer. What are the odds?)

So -- bad local TV via rabbit ears and a fully functioning DVD player. Not bad.