Technological Supremacy
Against all odds, Coleman and I fixed it. That's right. We fixed the TV.
Last week the TV went on the fritz. The picture sank about 1.5 inches, and became very bouncy. It was pretty annoying, especially because it meant we couldn't see the ticker at the bottom of the screen when watching ESPN. It also screwed with video game playing a little bit.
So I hit up the old Internet in search of some answers. The news wasn't promising. Apparently, the vertical deflection system was failing. If I remember correctly, when that happened to the Death Star, it blew up.
Fixing one's vertical deflection system is mostly luck. You have to take the back off of your TV, poke around and hope you find the loose area. The site I read said that if you can't find it you will either have to live with the problem or get a new TV. Well, we certainly aren't in the place to buy a new TV right about now, so off to work we went.
We've been planning this fix up job since Sunday. You have to unplug your tv over night to discharge the internal voltages, and even then you must stay away from a stray poke to horizontal deflection cage and high voltage generator, because they conduct 35000 volts of electricity. This is the part my wife wasn't too thrilled about. I'll admit, it added a nice little adrenaline rush to an otherwise mundane project.
After about an hour of poking and prodding, we finally got the problem taken care of. There is nothing quite like the high you get when you fix something all by yourself. Special thanks to the Internet, the wooden spoon we used to poke around without frying ourselves, and a little divine providence.
Fair Dinkum
Last week the TV went on the fritz. The picture sank about 1.5 inches, and became very bouncy. It was pretty annoying, especially because it meant we couldn't see the ticker at the bottom of the screen when watching ESPN. It also screwed with video game playing a little bit.
So I hit up the old Internet in search of some answers. The news wasn't promising. Apparently, the vertical deflection system was failing. If I remember correctly, when that happened to the Death Star, it blew up.
Fixing one's vertical deflection system is mostly luck. You have to take the back off of your TV, poke around and hope you find the loose area. The site I read said that if you can't find it you will either have to live with the problem or get a new TV. Well, we certainly aren't in the place to buy a new TV right about now, so off to work we went.
We've been planning this fix up job since Sunday. You have to unplug your tv over night to discharge the internal voltages, and even then you must stay away from a stray poke to horizontal deflection cage and high voltage generator, because they conduct 35000 volts of electricity. This is the part my wife wasn't too thrilled about. I'll admit, it added a nice little adrenaline rush to an otherwise mundane project.
After about an hour of poking and prodding, we finally got the problem taken care of. There is nothing quite like the high you get when you fix something all by yourself. Special thanks to the Internet, the wooden spoon we used to poke around without frying ourselves, and a little divine providence.
Fair Dinkum