I know you’re dying to know how I’ve been spending my time, since I’ve been such a bad blogger. Well… this weekend, we went to Ikea in Emeryville. Shockingly, it wasn’t terribly packed. My theory is that everyone’s doing their holiday shopping and not at a furniture store. Anyway, this being our second trip, we finally settled on an armoire in which to store our TV, etc.
The difficult thing — which we discovered, stupidly, after hours of complex assembly — is just how voluminous “etc.” is in this digital world. We have a receiver, a DVD player, a 32-inch TV, a Replay TV DVR unit, and, of course, a digital cable box. Though the armoire supposedly “fit most 32 inch TVs,” it didn’t fit ours. So we had to take out a shelf. Then, with the shelf out, we couldn’t fit all the rest of our goodies, even if we took off the little feet at the bottom of the receiver. Then, we also figured out that we’d never be able to get all of our cabling to occur in the way apparently intended by the Ikea folks. Somehow, they had us painstakingly nail in 50 tiny nails to adhere the fiberboard backing, which didn’t have ANY holes to allow for speaker wires, ethernet cables, RCA cables, or even power cords to protrude.
We had to tear off the back of the armoire. A hammer came in handy in that regard. It also helped ease a little frustration. We then tucked things in, very creatively, even hiding one box (which needs no remote control access) underneath. Now, you’d never know how close we came to junking the whole thing and trying to sell it on eBay. It almost looks… nice.
We were the ones to blame here because we didn’t do the basic measurements and initial research. But how in the world can a company sell a “TV Storage Unit” in this day and age that so aggressively fails to accommodate the digital lifestyle? Sure, it’s cheap, but I wouldn’t wish our Sunday of frustration on anyone.
(Meanwhile, our cable and cable modem access went out. The cable finally came back, but not the Internet. We are already growing to love Comcast, which can’t apparently find a moment — until next Saturday — to send over a technician.)