My friend is back. I am glad to have my friend back. My friend was in bad shape for a while but is all better now. Luckily the problem was not terminal. It only took one part and some bench time and it was back up and running. “What?” you say? “Bench time?” What kind of a person is this? No person at all. It is a “thing.” It is my television. “You call your television a friend?” Sure! Don’t you call yours a friend too? Stats show that most people spend more time with their televisions than with other humans so wouldn’t it make sense that it is your “friend?”
I haven’t gone as far as some people do and name my TV or my car for that matter. Sure, I think highly of both of them. But when their time comes to hit the garbage, I will have some amount of sorrow, but I will be too busy enjoying their replacement to feel too bad for too long. But that is a long way in the future. I hope. The story that had my friend in “surgery” is somewhat typical.
A couple of months ago I started noticing a small faint ripple moving from the right to the left of the screen changing speed from very slow at times to very fast at times and other times not even there. Then about a month or so ago I started having trouble turning the set on. It would start to come on but never quite get there. Then it wouldn’t come on at all. The set is 4 years old and of course the warrantee expired 3 years ago. It is a HD set so there was no way I was going to throw it out and buy another one.
Trying to find a TV repair shop these days is like trying to win the Power Ball. When I first got the set, there was a recall on a circuit board and the manufacturer sent a company out of Kernersville to fix it. I thought I would call them. A call gleaned they were no longer a service center and it would be FIVE WEEKS before they could even send someone out to just pick up the set. Well that wasn’t going to cut it. I had determined that the problem was somewhere in the power supply system and not a fatal problem and I wasn't going to wait 5 weeks just to see a repair truck show up. I started looking around again. I found a little repair shop in High Point and called them. Yep, they could fix it and if I could bring it in, they could get it fixed quicker. I said “OK!” Well that was easier said than done. My friend weighs more than most people do. It weighs 212 pounds.
It is a 34 inch CRT set. With the widescreen picture tube, not plasma or LCD, that much glass weighs a ton. But with a dolly and a ramp off the front porch into the bed of the truck, off to the repair shop my friend and I go. The repairman tells me that he can start on it either that day or the next. Better than I thought. Exactly six days later I got a phone call. My friend was up and running and I could come take him home.
I showed up ready to fork over several hundred dollars but was surprised to find that it was only $95. $15 for one IC chip in the high voltage power supply and $75 labor. Typical more for the labor than for the parts. Oh well, I wasn’t going to complain. I got out cheaper than I thought. We loaded up my buddy and away we go.
It is so nice to have my friend back. My little 20 inch SD set from the bedroom worked just great, but it just doesn’t have the screen size or the resolution of the 34 inch HD set. There definitely was a large hole, not just physically but emotionally as well. Who would have thought that of a television? Hopefully I am set for a long time of great television vieweing from my friend who lives in the living room.
