House of Eratosthenes

We have a Memorex combo DVD/VHS player that I snagged from somewhere after “Kidzmom” and I went our separate ways, which means it’s either past six years old or coming up on it. It works great, but over the last six months or so the remote has been developing bits of character. I really didn’t want to get rid of the combo unit over an issue with the remote. I’d say some three-quarters of the movies we watch are from Netflix, maybe twenty percent are from the DVD section of what we own, with the five percent left over coming from our VHS library. Having a combo player is great.

And I have a thing for machines that show Methusaleh-like longevity because of a superior design. I have interesting stories to tell because of this. I have always admired this in artificial things. I admire superior craftsmanship. I think it is to be honored, not kicked out to the curb.

So blogger friend Phil suggested a Logitech remote…but with the caveat that Ms. Phil was still in the process of making up her mind about the one he has, and is leaning toward a verdict of thumbs-down. (Update: Or not; the story on this seems to be as complicated as Ms. Phil, whom I’ve not yet met in person. But it seems the two grown-ups in the Phil household are having different experiences with the device which is my main point.) I took this advice nevertheless and have experienced similar results. I like it, although as remotes go I find the center of gravity to be quite a bit toward the back, which results in occasional “droppage” as my thumb flails about to find the right button. And there’s no command for turning on the clock timer of the DVD player, but that’s mostly because I haven’t taken the time to call tech support about it. I’m sure there’s a way.

Logitech Harmony My gal isn’t terribly pleased with it. She’d rather use “the” remote, which is to say the remote AT&T gave us to use with our cable receiver. On their books, I’m sure it shows they’re renting it to us or something. Whatever.

The point is…and this gets perilously close to “The Three Things Morgan Hasn’t Got the Balls to Blog”…there is a clear and present gender split with regard to devices like this.

I recall reading about a problem with exploding gas tanks. Daylight savings time would end, it would get nippy out, and for the next couple months the reports would pour in about sparks igniting passenger car gas tanks during fuel stops. It was thought that the cold, dry air elevated the risk of static discharge during the winter months, which would explain everything, but there was one problem: The victims were overwhelmingly female.

Overwhelmingly. It would happen again, and the authorities would know instantly it was another dame…and it would be. It never happened to a fella. Never, never, not ever.

What the hell?

The experts kept this on the down-low for obvious reasons, but they were perplexed. Someone had to get to the bottom of this, and they had to do it without discussing too much what they were trying to figure out.

The bright minds came and the bright minds went. No one could figure out what was happening. Winter here, winter gone…another one…theory, theory and more theory.

Finally, someone thought on it while keeping an open mind to the radical idea that women and men do things differently. And in a flash — literally — there was the answer.

Chicks don’t like cold.

They’re built to get preggers, you know…so by process of evolution, the condition of hypothermia carries different ramifications for the two sexes. Women are, for reasons that become abundantly obvious once you’re willing to consider them, acutely sensitive to the idea of the core of their bodies descending below 98.6. Granted this is not a good condition for boys & men either. But women have more of a primal fear of it; they’re built to live inside the village, we’re built to go outside in our bare feet, run around and hunt down wild boars. That’s our gig. Not theirs.

So they use the little metal tabby thing to get the nozzle pumping…then go inside the car while the tank fills up…meanwhile, the dude who’s filling up his car just stands there. She might be wearing a fur coat, he might be in shirt sleeves. But the discrepancy will remain. She’ll go inside the car and he’ll stand outside, because that is what we are built to do.

So his body is naturally grounded, whereas hers has enjoyed ample opportunity to move to a different voltage. Spark.

The Logitech remote, I notice, communicates to your devices by two levels of smartness. You can use it as a modal device. That means, you can tell it “TV”, meaning “I’m talking to the TV now.” You recognize and accept that until you switch it to another mode, you have nothing to say to the cable receiver or the DVD player. Or, you can take it to a higher level and tell it “I just want to watch a movie” and have it cycle through and send the right signals to the right devices…

The first of those two methods of use works pretty reliably. The second one never does.

I figured out the gender disparity. Like the gas pump puzzler, when you look at the evidence logically and factor in human behavior, it is exceedingly simple. Men like the remote. Women don’t. You see where I’m going now right?

Women use the remote as a device to prevent them from having to push more buttons. They use it to save steps…therefore, using the feature of it that does not work terribly well.

Men use it as a device to keep them from having to get up. I bought it for a specific reason: So I could shitcan the other three remotes. Let them get lost in the couch cushions, let them get run through the washing machine & dryer, barbeque the goddamn things for all I care. This one thing is supposed to take their place — and it does.

But that is how a man looks at it. We don’t care how many buttons we have to push, you see. It beats hunting down a wild boar in your bare feet.

The gals, they like things to be automated. Doors opened. Glasses of wine poured. They don’t mind getting up, but they want to ascend to a higher plane of decision-making, having a lower level of it completely handled. They want things put on auto-pilot so they don’t have to mess with details.

This is not to say chicks are lazy. If anything, it’s an observation that the dudes are the lazy ones.

But I think if you found ninety-eight more couples picked out at random — straight couples — and just gave each of them a super-duper remote like ours, you’d see the same outcome ninety-eight more times.

Men and women, you see, are different. It may not be politically-correct to point it out…and of course every rule is riddled with exceptions, as this one no doubt is.

But overall, it’s true. We don’t work the same. And I think my theory explains everything.

Well, actually, she loves the thing — and won’t even let me help her fix things when they get out of synch. I know that pressing the power button on the amplifier remote, or pressing one of the input buttons on the TV remote might fix her problem, but she’s very proud of her Logitech Universal.

She presses the “Help” button and it walks her through “fixing” it. It asks her questions, and based on her responses, it tries things and asks her if that fixed the problem.

She really really likes that because it gives her a feeling of independence … she doesn’t need to call me to fix things.

Now the funny thing is, it asks her questions like, “Is the amplifier on? Is the TV input set to AV1?”

Now, if you can answer questions like this … you should be able to figure out what’s wrong and “fix” it with the proper remote.

The one caveat is I guess you would have to know what’s hooked up to what, and I had to tell the remote that to get it set up…. so she doesn’t have to remember.

What she loves about it is, when everything’s working normally, which is most of the time, you just press “Activities, Watch Satellite” or whatever and everything that needs to be turned on gets turned on and set to the proper input.

Now …. admittedly, she has several “guy” personality traits. She used to chase the other girls at camp with daddy long legs, and she has no tolerance for helpless women who simply scream in movies. Plus she loves her 24VDOHC engine. Yeah. I get the 4-banger 2 liter SOHC car. She gets the one with the Umph!

And she uses it.

She also tends toward running warm rather than cold.

So here’s what you do. Put an AT&T label on the logitech remote and tell her AT&T recalled the original one and that’s the one they use now. Plus it has all these cool features.

Ok, I’m assuming since she’s with you she’s way too smart to fall for that. 😉 But maybe she can use that psychology on herself.
- philmon | 11/13/2010 @ 21:01
In order to bring the experience of working “perfectly” with these other devices, thereby of tailoring itself to the unique demands of your living room, the Logitech remote has to apply itself as — pause here to suck in breath in abject horror — a stateful thing. It achieves its suitability by learning as it goes along. That means it can learn enough to screw itself up.

She’s all-but-convinced that when my son was here, he pushed some buttons on it and it doesn’t work as well as it did before. Me, I don’t know what to think. I’m inclined in her direction, since I’m hearing more of this complaining now than I used to. Of course, nobody will ever prove this or disprove this.

Point is: Women want “the damn thing to just work.” Men want to not have to get up…at least, not to have to fix the same ol’ thing they already fixed. (Making brand new whiz-bang things work, is A-OK of course.) We only get in trouble with everybody else: They want to pretend men and women are exactly the same.
- mkfreeberg | 11/14/2010 @ 06:47
I boought one of these once. I could never get it to work. I returned for a refund and bought a Phillips Unversal for 10-15 $. The Phillips does not claim to do everything that the Logitech claims. But the Phillips works.
- Bob Sykes | 11/14/2010 @ 07:00

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Memo For File CXXIVSaturday, November 13th, 2010

Memo For File CXXIV
Saturday, November 13th, 2010