The thin end of the wedge

We're looking forward to an Andrew free week. Well, let's be honest here; I am :-) Frankly I'd much rather it was a Morgan free week but we can't always have what we want so I'll go with the next best thing. Which isn't to say that living with Andrew around is any kind of hardship; we're getting along just fine nowadays.

He's off to some boy scout related thing. I wasn't in the boy scouts so I have no idea what it's all about. I do know that when I asked him how he felt about showing off his woggle in public he totally missed the joke!

So when I came home tonight he approached diffidently; would I record one program for him on my HTPC while he was away.

Now you have to understand that as the Johnny-come-lately in this particular family group I've had to carve out my own niche and I do feel the need to defend it. Give either of them half a chance and they'll exploit me to death. Maybe I'm overly cynical but my experience with Morgan certainly reinforces that view of things.

So I was somewhat guarded in my response. What program? When? He was going to watch it while I was at work wasn't he?

Oh, he assured me, he'd much rather have me transfer it to DVD so he can watch it on his own set. Uh huh.

Initial agreement reached it was time for the first whammy. 'Well, it's not one program, it's three'.

A bit more digging and it turns out that those three programs consist each of two one hour programs. So now we're up to six programs.

And then came the second whammy. 'Oh, and could you record them the following week as well?'. So now I'm recording twelve hours of video that he wants transferred to DVD. He expressed considerable surprise when I intimated it wasn't going to fit on one DVD. Thus a short discussion of the average length of movies and hadn't he ever thought that perhaps the DVD format was designed for an average movie length of two hours plus or minus a bit? Nope he hadn't. How foolish of me to think he had!

So, having made him very aware of how I saw through his attempt (successful as it happens) at using the wedge I asked him channel and time. He rattled off a list. 'Nope' I said 'write it down!'. Much moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Now you'd reckon, wouldn't you, that the easiest way would be to take a sheet of paper and a pencil and jot it down? Nope, that'd make too much sense. Nope, he just had to open Word and then fuss around with much calling for help from Mom, to create a three column document containing the requested data. He printed it out and closed the document without saving.

Channel was straightforward enough. Day also though he didn't specify the date as well. But the time column was 9:00-11:00. 'Uh Andrew? AM or PM?' More wailing and gnashing of teeth as he reopened Word, yelled for the same help he'd had a mere five minutes earlier and recreated the document.

Yeah I could have told him to add the extra information by hand using a pen but I thought it better to let him suffer. I'm sure that if I wait long enough (though I might not have enough life left) he'll finally realise that 2 + 2 does equal 4.