GDGDOs

That last would be... Garage Door Openers.

You have to do two things to program the remote in a car to use a garage door opener. First, you have the car 'learn' the code that's used in the existing opener -- I guess that's because the newer ones have a 'rolling code' that algorithmically generated, rather than being dynamic. Second, you have to tell the opener to expect to hear an introductory communication from the vehicle, so that they can synch up on their codes.

To do the first, you hold the remote near the car's control, push both buttons at once, and wait for the light to blink. Okay, thats a little tricky -- it'd be better if the car could be pressed and would 'look' for, say, thirty seconds for a signal from the hand-held remote. Still, not impossible.

To do the second, you press the Learn button on the GDO, and it looks for the signal from the car. You have thirty seconds from when you push the button till you have to signal from the car. Couple of problems here.

First, the 'Learn' button is inside the casing that shields the light bulbs. Why can't that button be in an easily-accessible position? I'm sure the Official Position, harrumph, is that this would make it too easy to accidentally push. Oh, sure, I can easily see that. And Second, since you have to take that casing off, it stands to reason that the car can't be there -- unless you want to stand on the car to get to it. So you move the car out -- all the way out, because, hey, that doors going to be coming down, and you really don't want the car there. So you put it on the driveway. Then you press the but -- oh, look, you just closed the door. First time I tried to make this work, I think I took two years off the operating life of the opener, running the door up and down till the car remote finally worked. You guys ever hear of a Test Mode?

I know, problems of the idle rich.