Try this and see what happens

For the past couple days, we have been parrying three new gizmos, a television, a combination DVR/VCR, and a new computer.
Every time we get a new gizmo we face the stroke-survivor problem, my compromised ability to comprehend arcane manuals.
What happens is my wife reads the manual, which prompts me to try this and see what happens.
I suppose it's the approach I had before the stroke, but I have to depend on it more since the stroke.
And there's no pressure, since my old computer still works just fine.
The new computer is fabulous. It's my old computer but much better.
Which means it's friendly. It didn't throw me for a loop as soon as I turned it on.
To some extent we are already computer-savvy, so we have some idea what is happening.
Beyond that, the husband of a friend, a guy who works at MAC Shack in Penfield, came over to set it up.
He essentially made the new computer my old computer.
My wife and I probably could have done this, but it wouldn't have been as simple or fast. I'm sure the guy has done it hundreds of times — us only recently when my wife got a new Dell® laptop PC.
The new TV and combination DVR/VCR weren't so friendly.
And with them we didn't have someone to help us set them up.
And with them we had pressure; our previous system was defunct.
The other night (Monday, March 8, 2010) my wife and I were parrying our new DVR/VCR; something about making “favorite” channels.
Zapped it; try this and see what happens.

“We” is my wife of 42+ years (“Linda”) and I.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993.
• “Penfield” is a suburb east of Rochester, NY. “MAC Shack” is an Apple computer store therein. My new computer is an Apple Macintosh laptop, a MacBook Pro. My previous computer was an Apple Macintosh.