Yes you can do what you want.

I usually select the OFF button to create my macro. Click on the Off button and in the macro window (keep this as a Normal Macro) select the Variable button at the top. Its the box that says V=1. This window will pop up:



Click Add New and name it whatever you want, so long as you know which variable you want to use for what purpose if you have multiple variables in the project. Now select FALSE and click "SET"

Now add your Off Macro. It will look something like this (I had clicked on the receiver icon rather then in the tree view in this macro, so ignore that first line in the macro):



On the bottom of your macro window, select the pull down that says "Type = Normal" and Select Variable. This will split the macro window into two sections, True and False. In the False macro, enter your macro that you want to run when the system is off:



Now you want to set this macro variable state to True, so the remote knows, "OK, we turned the system on, so let's remember that it is on". To do this click the V=1 button again, highlight the variable name you create, and select TRUE and click "SET"


Now the easiest thing to do is to highlight this entire macro, copy via Control C. Now select the True tab on the bottom of the macro window. Click in the macro window and press Control V to paste. Double click on your long delay and select a short delay instead:


That is pretty much it. You want to make sure you set that variable status in all your macros so the remote can properly track if the remote is on and needs the long delay or if it is off. That is it.

Now what is happening is everytime you turn the system off by pressing OFF, it sets the remote to "false". When you pick the remote up to watch TV, it knows the system is off, when you press Watch Cable, it fires the FALSE macro which includes the 10 second delay in the above example. It also sets the variable state to "true". So now it knows the TV is on. Now when you go to the WATCH menu and press Watch Cable again, it is set to TRUE already, so it runs the TRUE macro which in the above example includes just a short .5 second delay. It will stay in this true state until we tell it to switch to false, which we did in the OFF button macro.