Immuno-(im?)(de?)(sup?)pressed

So, I’ve been making a move towards having a TV-Free house. Mind you I’m not getting rid of the TV concept, I’m just getting rid of the TV’s in my house and equipping all the rooms I watch TV in with computers that are TV ready. I eventually want to get rid of cable/satellite service and strictly watch DVD’s, webcast, and downloaded media only, but I’m not quite prepared to release myself the media leash of network TV broadcast. I know it’s silly, but it’s actually a little scary to think of.

My first step was to get rid of the TV in living room. I had an iMac that’s a few years old, but I figured would work well enough for the purpose intended. All I really want is to connect the video input from satellite receiver so I can watch TV and then just be able to email, tweet, and blog from it. Fairly simple set up, or so you would think. My parents needed a new TV and mine was in pretty good shape. I figured I was all ready to work on phase one of my plan, so I went ahead and gave them my TV. The following is a detailed description of the steps taken thus far to achieve phase 1.

• Set up iMac in front of my couch where I would normally watch TV.
• Discover that I have too old of an operating system for AOL (my email service…don’t hate).
• Discover that I have too old of an operating system for Adobe Air making it impossible for me to use automatic updating twitter clients like Twhirl. (if it’s not any indication of how lazy I am from my need for TV in my house, it shouldn’t be any wonder I’m too lazy to keep hitting the refresh button on twitter.com)
• Decide to skip system upgrade until I find someone that can give it to me for free and decide to suck up the inconveniences of manually updating twitter and accessing my email from a web browser.
• Buy Miglia TVMicro from amazon.com to convert coax video output into USB. I was comfortable it would work with my computer because the system requirements on their website say it works with Mac OSX (and not a specific version of Mac OSX).
• Receive in the mailTVMicro and go to plug in video from satellite received to discover that my receiver doesn’t have any coax outputs (like every other satellite and cable receiver ever made), only RCA outputs.
• Drive to Radioshack to get RCA-Coax adapter.
• Plug in video to new TVMicro via satellite receiver and video adapter. (Is this the first successful step so far? If not it if feels like it.)
• Go to install TVMicro software only to discover that my Mac OSX 10.3.9 is insufficient when I get the error message “Cannot Install Software. Mac OSX 10.4 or later is required.”
• Go to Best Buy to get new Mac OSX 10.5 (which I was trying to avoid in an earlier bullet, but now that I’m financially committed to this endeavor, I am too goddam stupid to back out).
• Come home to install Mac OSX 10.5 only to discover I don’t actually have enough physical RAM to install new OS.
• Go to Fry’s Electronics (an hour away, but conveniently located near band rehearsal) to get new RAM chip.
• Bring new RAM chip home to discover that my desktop computer actually requires notebook style RAM (wtf?).

mebeli

• Drive back to Fry’s (not nearly as conveniently located an hour away when you need to return something fast) to exchange RAM.
• Bring home new RAM. Install it.
• Go to install new OS (NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE, RIGHT?).
• New Mac OS begins to load, install runs for like an hour, and 75% into it the computer gives me an error message stating “Install Did Not Finish Due To Error Loading, Try Again” (with no explanation of failure).
• I obviously try again…..another hour later, same result with different error message, “Source Media Damaged”. I look an the install DVD and see a smudge on it. I figure I’ll try to clean it and reinstall before returning it.
• I put in the disk to reinstall AGAIN! But now I have to go out to a concert. I let the installer run while I’m gone.
• I come home from the concert all excited to see if my new OS is installed so I can actually watch TV again (this process has lasted over a week). As I’m entering my house, I think how wonderful it will be to watch American Idol. I go to see if it worked and the computer is turned off. “Strange” I think to myself. The computer should not have turned off after the install. I try to turn the computer on with no success. Dead computer, dead screen. What the fuck? I look at the power cable to see if it’s plugged in and discover that my dog chewed through the cable while I was at the concert. Right. Sure. Why not?

That’s it. If this mother fucker doesn’t work after I fix the power cable, I’m going out to buy another TV.

UPDATED TO ADD: Apparently if you’re mat at your dog for eating your power cable, it’s not a good idea to throw your computer keyboard against the wall. It may break.