The danger of "DO IT YOURSELF"

There are a number of things in life that I have figured out on my own. I'm not the most technologically savvy person but from time to time I do serve as my mom's computer help line. Of course the fact that I know more than her may just be generational. Anyway, what you see above you is the surround sound system I bought from Circuit City last week (a shopping experience that could be a blog all on its own.) I have been pretty busy lately so it has been sitting in the box until last night when I decided to attempt installation.

Now here is where the danger of the "DO IT YOURSELF" mentality comes in. My sales associate offered me the option of having someone install my new TV and surround sound for me. As I watched the sales total continue to rise with every new cable or accessory that was needed I decided I would save some pennies and install it myself. As I unloaded all of the speakers and accompanying DVD player and began the process of actually hooking things up, that pretty picture of the speakers soon became a jumble of wires looking somehwat like this:

The best part of this tangle of wires is that my beloved sales associate had touted this system as "wireless" surround sound. With further research I found that there is separate accessory that is the wireless receiver which would be an additional $100+ if I decide to purchase. This only added to the Circuit City joy I had experienced during the purchasing process. But suddenly that installation service looked so much more appealing, regardless of the cost. Maybe because at about this point I think I looked something like this...

And let me briefly discuss the helfpulness (or lack thereof) of the installation manual. If only I had brushed up on my Japanese perhaps I could have deciphered the instructions a bit better. Ok, so it wasn't actually in Japanese but it may as well have been because I couldn't make much sense of it. So after about an hour of struggling to hook up the tangle of wires to the main unit and then shove them through the small hole at the back of my entertaiment stand I was ready to hook them up to the TV itself. This process seemed to go much more smoothly than expected and I thought maybe I had finally won the battle.

I turned on the TV and powered up the main unit so that I could be blown away by my surround sound experience. And I definitely was blown away...by the fact that NO sound whatsoever was coming from my magnificent set-up. I went back to my trusty manual to see what I could have missed. And there in the shuffle of pictures I see the text that might possibly be the key to experiencing life in Dolby 5.1--"connect audio cable from main unit to TV (audio cable not included.)" Let's review that last part..."audio cable not included." This is when all sense of reason left me because I cannot comprehend how one could buy an impressive surround sound audio sytsem without having the audio cable needed for it to work to be included in the box. So there I sat, watching the opening scene of "What about Bob?" in complete and utter silence. I think next time I'll abandon the "DO IT YOURSELF" mindset and invest a few extra dollars in my sanity!