Things have been quiet because I have been busy, Goddammit. We can’t all get jacked up on green beer and spend a couple of days gently moaning in agony and wondering if the color of your urine is an aftereffect of Sam’s Club Bulk Food-B-Green or because of a throbbing tumor sucking greedily on your thyroid.
The nice gougers at the electronic parts warehouse finally sent me a new color wheel, or “heart”, for the big screen DLP TV, which I call “Tin Man” when I’m not calling it “Douche Box” or “Goddamned Overpriced Foreign Box Of Regret”.
The color wheel, like it sounds, a delicate wheel of six colored lenses, fully exposed, about half the size of a pack of cigarettes. All the light that comprises the picture goes through it for proper colorization, so if you get a fingerprint on it? It’s ruined. If you scratch it? Ruined. Get a hair stuck to it? Yup. So obviously the best person to handle it is a shaky-handed borderline alcoholic with shoulder-length hair. Unfortunately, Johnny Depp wasn’t available, so it became my fucking problem.
The color wheel fits into a small space in the TV cabinet that is exactly the size of the wheel, plus 11 microns. It fits under a bracket made of sharpened aluminum that clears the edge of the easily-scratched lenses by 2 microns. And it is attached to the image engine circuit board by a wire with 1 micron of slack, but fortunately, you can remove this wire from the image engine board with only the minimal collateral of mildly flash-frying the image engine circuit board or gentle electrocution. It is arranged in this way probably to preserve space in the giant, empty cabinet… or so that weak-willed people will call for help and justify the cost of the correspondence course it takes to legally spray-paint “Authorized Samsung Repair Representative” on the side of your Celica.
Performing this operation requires:
- A Philips head screwdriver with a 6-inch barrel.
- Rubber surgical gloves to prevent fingerprints on the wheel.
- A hairnet to prevent hair from falling into the wheel casing.
- Canned air.
- Long tweezers to handle the screws, since only a toddler has small enough hands to reach in to place them, and there are easier and cheaper ways to kill an toddler.
- At least, but not more than, four beers.
Even prepared with these items, it’s going to take you at least six shaky tries before you get the Goddamned thing seated, and between each try I recommend going outside for a cigarette to calm your nerves… if only because if there’s a more effective way to horrify your neighbors than to stand on your front step with rubber gloves and a hairnet, muttering, “I can’t get the little fucking thing stuck in… I’m done being gentle; if I can’t convince it to take it by easing it, I’m gonna get a fucking hammer and see if it’ll cooperate,” please email me with the details so I can try it.
Assuming you finally get the wheel seated and screwed down without damaging it, don’t forget to use your canned air… around your mouth and nose, since you’ll want to celebrate, but the economy’s down and cocaine is expensive.
When it was all said and done, I fired up the TV and got great, sharp picture, indicating that the operation was a success. Not only that, but the TV runs without any of the prior shrieking sounds…
…Which called my attention to the fact that, man, is my TiVo noisy.
Goddammit.
Borderline? C’mon now….