Simple, easy installations

65-inch Vizio with Surround from Costco. Want professional installation for $250? Nah. We got it.

An update on the rattling refrigerator for those still holding an interest in the mundane:

As suspected, the two-year old fridge was simply out of balance. An 18-inch "wonder pry bar" raised the corner long enough to spin the adjustable foot about three turns. When the bar was released and weight returned to the foot, the rattle was gone. A two-minute adjustment, put off by the retired handyman, while he and the wife endured two months of the intermittent sound of a small engine revving in the kitchen.

From left, ROKU, Comcast, Sound bar, TV

Flushed with success and housebound by hot and sticky weather, the handyman turned to the installation of a basement Big Ass Smart TV, five inches bigger than the dead one. Challenges included mounting the screen on the wall, rerouting the cable around the fireplace, connecting the screen to ROKU and the Comcast set top box using HDMI cables, connecting the Digital Versatile Disk player,  logging on to the WIFI and talking with Netflix by using the remote control arrow key as a typewriter, tying in the Surround Sound Bar and subwoofer, pairing the Bluetooth ITunes Music source to the Sound Bar, training the extra remotes to share sundry functions, and most difficult of all, re-activating the Comcast service by calling their Help Line, working with their polite, persistent, oblivious robot that asks the same irrelevant questions and then at last explaining to the live foreign-sounding tech that they should just reset the system and keep on trying, not give up and send out a tech to our house at the next available appointment in five days.

It was the better part of the week for the false starts, redoes, blood pressure spikes and bad words required to set up the system, all the while carefully following written instructions and YouTube videos for dummies.

Without exception, these instructions invariably begin with the word "Easy" and liberal use of the term "simple steps."

Which one would you use to play iTunes from the Mac on the Soundbar?
See the cookbook, read the blue labels. It's easy.

Happily, we are watching the baseball game on the new system today, with booming bass and life-like game sounds and crowd noise. Unhappily, the Twins are losing to Seattle -- in glorious high definition.

Kathleen has suggested showing her how to play a movie on the new system, using the DVD player and the brand new array of remote controls for managing it.

The retired handyman has agreed to explain how the new system works. He will begin, of course, by saying: "It is easy to play your movie dear, just follow these simple steps."