A View From The Keg…

Okay,

So I’m on the phone with my uncle (an electronics genius), discussing the ‘ghost’ problem. The batteries have been removed from the remote and it’s safely stored in another room. I come into the living room and – the TV comes on!! Now, I have to say that at this point, I’m really thinking it’s something electronic (or at least I want to). I turn it off, and we decide to pull the plug for the night. If there’s a ghost around, it’s either going to: A) plug the thing back in and just go on watching it, or B) get really mad and get down to some serious haunting, rather than simply attempting to freak us out with a TV. Which, by the way, it’s done a fair job of to this point.

Now my uncle is a very smart, pragmatic man. He told me that he remembered reading about garage doors opening when Sputnik would fly over houses. He told me that today’s remote controls could conceivably be strong enough to control our TV from a distance, so it could be a neighbor. We discussed electro-magnetism, and just about any other possibility you could think of. Then, he told me the one thing that really made me feel better. He said even if it were a ghost visiting, he couldn’t remember a ghost ever hurting anybody. I thought it was an appropriate thing to say, but it didn’t make my wife feel much better, that’s for sure.

The computer was shut down, the TV was unplugged, and we made it through the night without incident. After my morning computing, I plug the thing back in. A short time later, I’m on the phone with a client, and I hear the unmistakable sound of the TV coming on. I hold my cool and finish the conversation, then immediately turn to trying to figure out what could be wrong. I’m pretty good at trouble shooting. It’s actually an acquired skill, one that I learned from nearly 17 years running a recording studio. So I try what I think is a good first step – turn it off via the power button. Trouble is, the thing doesn’t turn off. I push it again, nothing. Again, nothing. I reach for the remote control, push its off button – and the TV turns off. Could all this really just be the power switch on the TV? Could Sony actually make a defective power switch? As of now, it’s looking as though that could be the answer. A ‘ghost in the machine’, to quote our friend Sting.

I liked it better when I thought we had a ghost in the room…

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 5:05 pm and is filed under General Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.