Let there be sound

If you have been reading, you know that my husband was out of town most of last week. And he works evenings, so except for watching House last Monday, he didn't get to watch any of the new TV shows. So I figured that he would catch up on some of the stuff by watching Hulu and such on Sunday. Instead he spent most of the day blogging, and then downloaded Merlin and Being Erica. The only thing he watched on Hulu was Dollhouse.

So I can't talk to him about anything I watched last week. I can't ask him what he thinks of Flashforward if he hasn't seen it.

So yesterday he is in here blogging again, and after he finishes a post I tell him he should at least watch Flashforward in the hour he has left before he goes to work. So he does that, and I watch most of it with him, though I have to leave the room a few times because I was cooking something.

Anyway, he gets annoyed with this computer. He thinks it is too slow and he thinks Hulu is to slow and he'd rather download everything, and I think most of the time he is being too picky about that. He decides that he should at least try to watch the stuff on the new laptop, which is annoying to me, since the laptop has a smaller screen. But I don't complain when he does it just this once, cause I have already seen Flashforward, and I have the cooking to deal with anyway.

So I come back, and he has the laptop hooked up to the Internet, and he watches Flashforward, and I watch most of it, and I go and get our lunch and we eat it in here while we watch Hulu. And then I have to go clean up from lunch, and he wants to know if I want the Internet left on the laptop, or if I want everything put back the way it was.

I want everything put back the way it was.

So I think that everything is put back the way it was, and I clean up some of the stuff from lunch, and he gets ready to leave for work. And he leaves, and I have some stuff I have planned to do, only I decide to look at some stuff on the Internet first. And I usually find some stuff on Hulu to watch in between doing other things, like I'll probably be watching the seventh season of Stargate later this week.

And then I noticed that the sound wasn't on.

So that is annoying. I try to look around and make sure that everything is plugged up, make sure that there are no loose connections, and check to make sure that all the blinky lights are blinking where they are supposed to. Finding nothing wrong there, I restart what I was doing. And when that doesn't help, I turn off the computer and turn it back on again, which usually fixes whatever is wrong.

And the sound still doesn't work.

At this point I should find something else to do, but I don't, cause I know this sound problem is going to bother me all day if I don't figure out what is wrong with it. I have videos to work on and cleaning to do and I need to plan exactly where I am going to go in Irving later this week, but I can't focus on any of that because the sound doesn't work on the computer.

And I am pretty sure that whenever there is something wrong with the computer it is because my husband has fiddled with something. Yes, he knows all about computers and is much better with them than I am, but he's always adjusting something that doesn't need adjusting, so that when I need it I can't get it to work properly. And he's like, why didn't you just do such-and-such? But why would I have done such-and-such, as it had never needed to be done like that before?

So I am thinking that he has done something, but I don't know what. And I think that while I am sitting there trying to figure it out, I might as well put the Internet connections back on the laptop and watch something on Hulu.

Only the Internet doesn't seem to work on the laptop, and I don't know why that is either. It should be something simple like taking one cord off of the one computer and attaching it to the other computer. But that doesn't seem to do it, so I put everything back the way it was and restart the old computer a second time.

Still no sound.

I'm afraid that I will accidentally knock over the laptop, so I take that into the other room.

The old computer has messages about new hardware. I don't have any new hardware, but maybe it will tell me something about the sound. After letting it reinstall something for both the DVD player and the keyboard (I couldn't see that anything was wrong with the DVD player, and the keyboard obviously worked just fine), I waited for a message about the speakers, but that was the end of the hardware messages.

There is something about a calender. If you tell the computer that it is last week or last month or whenever the computer was working properly, it will go back to working properly. Only I couldn't remember how to get to that calender. I found a calender, but probably not the right one as changing the date did nothing for the sound, it just changed the date.

So now I have a computer with the wrong date and no sound.

A friend made suggestions. I had already tried some of them, and the rest did not seem to do much.

I decide to have a lot at the back of the computer where most of the connections are. To really get a good look, I have to turn the computer so that the back part is now facing up and the front of the computer is now facing down. Everything looks okay, except that next to where the speakers are plugged in are two other holes that look exactly the same. Maybe the speakers are plugged in at the wrong place? But surely if someone had unplugged the speakers, like, to use them on the laptop, then someone would look to see where the speakers were plugged in to begin with and then make sure that they we again plugged in at the right place.

Well, I look at that sort of thing before I unplug anything from the computer.

The holes have symbols next to them, but they are too small for me to see what they are. And I cannot hold onto the computer and a magnifying glass at the same time, so I will just have to try one and then another.

So after again turning the computer on and off a couple of times, it turns out that the speakers should have been attached at the top hole and they were plugged in at the bottom hole.

By this time I have spent three hours turning the computer on and off and looking up stuff on the Internet and other things trying to find out why the sound doesn't work, plus I have talked to my friend for another hour. It is just about time to fix dinner. I get about two hours of work done before I mostly give up and just play around with the videos for a bit while I watch House.

My husband came home, and I asked him if he had done anything with the speakers. And he said he used them on the laptop and probably plugged them back in at the wrong place, cause he couldn't see, he was just doing it by feel.

I don't see why he couldn't just admit that when I stood here and asked him if everything was put back the way it was supposed to be. He didn't even tell me he had done anything to the speakers, just the Internet connections.

Anyway, it all seems to be working again. Except that the date is wrong.

I don't think that I'll tell him about that.