I'll admit, I'm getting a bit long in the tooth and yes, it's true that I have brutally slaughtered a few million brain cells with various adult beverages in my lifetime, but I still have enough left to program a VCR. You do remember those don't you? Well, I could do it that is, until I got a satellite service. Now I usually end up taping paid commercial announcements amazing, those gadgets. But is it my rapidly declining mental capacity or has everything gotten more complicated? I can remember when photography used to be fairly simple - focus, compose, sunny 16, push the little button. Now it's digital zooms, optical zooms, resolutions, LCD's, CCD's, memory cards, and mega pixels. And that's just the camera. You also must deal with computers and their associated nightmares, printers with minds of their own, and even monitors. Monitors you say? What's so tough about a monitor you turns it on, you turns it off. No big deal you say? Read on.

Like me, my faithful monitor of many years was showing some signs of age slow to warm up, brightness had fallen a bit, and contrast wasn't what it used to be. Besides, I reasoned, it was only a 17-inch and with such wonderful programs such as Photoshop with all its little submenus that need screen space, I really, really needed a 19 incher. Diligently I searched the internet, trying to understand such terms such as dot pitch and refresh rate, when I found one that I thought would suffice, a Samsung, not one of those fancy, flat LCD models with a price tag bigger than the screen. No sir, this one was a CRT job, a tube type, one that folks my age could understand and deal with.

A few days later, the FedEx man shows up and I'm ready to go. But just to make sure, I called my son, a true computer nerd, and asked if there would be any problems to deal with. "Not a one," he says, "just plug that baby in and turn it on". Oh yeah! It was bigger, it was brighter, even my photos looked good on it. There was just one thing; it had just a smidge of a reddish tint in the center of the screen and a little bit of blue in the lower left corner.

The manual was of no help. I call Samsung. I get the customary recorded message. "All of our representatives are busy right now. Please stay on the line. Your call is very important to us." Dear readers, we know that's a lie don't we? If our call were REALLY important, they would have more employees to help us wouldn't they? So I waited, watching wrinkles form on my skin, until finally, a young man asks if he can help me. I explain the problem. He then tells me to check the number of pins on the video card on the back of the computer. I explain that this will take the flexibility of a 14-year-old female gymnast, but he has no sympathy. "Fifteen pins," I painfully gasp trying to rub the cramps out of my leg. "Aha! Your monitor has but 13 pins. It isn't getting all the color information it needs. Just send it back he says and for $50 we will send you a new one."

"Wait a minute," I scream, "This a new set, right out of the box."

"Well, that's our policy" he says, "Sorry."

I call the nerd son again. "How many pins on your video card?"

"15" he says.

I tentatively call on some of my last remaining brain cells and ask, "If my video card has 15 pins and the Samsung has only 13, wouldn't the video card be supplying everything its supposed to do? I mean, the pins are there deal with it." "Makes sense to us," said the cells. "That Samsung sadist probably didn't know what he was talking about anyway."

Now it seems the vendor for this little gem happened to be CompUSA. I give them a call. Talked to an old guy. We understood each other. His brain cells were in no better shape than mine so he has me download a prepaid FedEx label and send it back to them.

I get back on the Internet and, to my delight, find that Best Buy also carries the same monitor AND they have it in stock right here in my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I ship off the old one and trot down to Best Buy. Sure enough, their monitor has 13 pins as well, just like I thought it would. But, there is only one of them and the box has a hole in it the size of forklift. I have them check it out before buying but luckily it fired up okay and we couldn't see any damage. Get home, open box. No base for the monitor. They left it out of the box at the store when they were checking it. Call store. Wait 15 minutes listening to recordings about how my call is very important to them. Finally talk to someone. I ask them to put my name on the base and explained how thrilled I would be to drive 25 miles back to the store to pick it up the next day.

Thankfully, the old pick up made it but when I asked the girl at the counter for the missing base, she couldn't find it. She directs me to a manager who is stocking some items from a rolling ladder and is struggling with some kind of lock and wire cage. Manager ignores me. Manager ignores me for at least 10 minutes while he messes around with the stupid, %##@#&*^%, lock. Finally, he gets it locked, ambles down the ladder and says, "I'll be right with you." Manager then strolls behind counter, talks to his buddies, wanders off down an isle, talks to more buddies, and just as I'm about to go Postal, asks if he can help me.

I impatiently relate the missing base story one more time and now he begins to search the same places the first employee did. Time passes. More wrinkles form. He calls to someone else to help him look. I casually mention that the manager who called me last evening promised to put my name on it and put it in a safe place.

"Oh, why didn't you say so before? I bet it's in the managers office." Well slap myself on the forehead and call me a dummy. What was I thinking? My bad.

Drive 25 miles home. Install base. Fire up monitor. Works great. All except for a smidge of reddish tint in the center and a little bit of blue in the lower left corner.

"I still got the problem." I sob to the nerd.

"Uh, Dad, do you, by any chance, have any speakers sitting close to the monitor? Sometimes the magnets in them will cause strange colors on the screen."

You already know the answer don't you? I told you monitors weren't simple.

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Warren Williams has been doing photography for over 25 years focusing mainly on Nature and wildlife. His work has been published in several magazines, including Outdoor Photographer, Outdoor Oklahoma, Oklahoma Today, and Persimmon Hill (the magazine of the Cowboy Hall of Fame). Several of his photos have also appeared on calendars by Smith-Southwestern. Warren is an active member on PhotoMigrations.com and invites you to visit his website located at: Warren Williams Photography - Images of Wildlife and Nature.