Fame? Sure.....That'll be $12,000,000. Paper or plastic?

Was sitting in front of the TV this morning, going about my morning coffee&cigarette while watching CNN ritual and saw a piece on product/business naming and what it takes to get recognition.
According to the expert analyst (Lord knows, news channels have cornered the market on these guys!) it takes about 12 million in advertisment and exposure of a new business, product, or name to get it "recognized" by the general public.

This suddenly made sense as the coffee started to kick in, there are only 3 ways for someone to get famous:
1) Spend the approx. 12million on promotion and advertisement (this is what politicians do in most cases)
2) Do something that will make the news agencies give you the exposure! (Works mostly for heinous perpitrators of awful acts...... oh yeah, and politicians too...)
3) Do something that various agents will, under contract for a portion of the proceeds arising from the resulting fame, fund the necessary exposure/advertisment (JK Rawling..... Kurt Cobain..... that skinny chick that models those clothes and that perfume, even Dear Abby and Dr. Phil fit in here right along with Wierd "Al" Yankovic et. al.)

Then another thing made sense as well....... as CNN began their entertainment segment with a piece on a stalked celeb.... why bother?

Color Wheel! Next I expect they'll run on coal.

Ever had or known anyone else that had one of those post-modern aluminum Christmas trees with the rotating color wheel spotlight behind it?
It would seem that someone at Samsung Electronics did, and what a difference in price and reliability it has made in their DLP televisions......sadly, both being proportionally lower.

"What?", You ask.

Here's the lowdown...

DLP chips (a miracle of technology in themselves) can only produce a picture in shades of grey. Yup, black and white. So the original way to get a color picture using DLP technology was to use three of them, each with its own color filter - red, blue and green -, then combine the three images to make one beautiful picture using mirrors or prisms.

But that was too expensive to compete with the old style of Projection TV's that used 3 picture tubes (C.R.T.s) - believe it or not.

So Samsung got an idea.... Why not just use one chip for all three by alternating filters of each color in the light stream? Just flash the one-color images so fast on the screen that it fools the brain into thinking it sees one full-color picture?

And thus the color-wheel was reborn.

Problem? In order to create the required 30 full-color frames a second that modern TV shows us, the wheel has to rotate at 1800 rpm in close proximity to the very hot (and equally short-lived) light source. The bearings and the motor fail......first it whirrs loudly (some have even been known to drown out their own audio) for a time then the picture either disappears or goes to only one color.

Thanks Samsung, now that you've found a way to put moving parts in a High Definition DLP TV I might just stand a chance of sticking with this career!

"Black Friday"

Ever had an idea, and wondered if it was just a product of some sort of temporary insanity? It would seem I made the tactical error of buying shots without taking the factor of "reciprocity" into account....... along with the fact that others didn't have to work on Black Friday.

I only expected the one shot, followed by a "Thanks man- Happy Turkey Day", but I found myself at the center of what I deemed to be a tsuami of generously given liquor, appreciating the motive but not the end result. Yeah, each may have only had two shots that fateful night - one from me and one with me- but my head and liver may never again be the same. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 and experience a harsh master indeed.

Think I'll stick to coffee and soda for a while.

Happy Thanksgiving!

All I must say is that I absolutely love this holiday! I hope that all that read this find it happy and stress-free......although for some it might be a tall order.

I also want to extend the offer of Turkey to all my good friends* that desire such of the "Wild" veriety...... For the takers, I'll be at a certain underground bar at 9 PM Thursday ( the less hard-cored can accept an equally intoxicating substitute shot of their choosing..... limit one, I'm not a millionare, you know).

Good luck and good wishes.

I'm not giving it out to just anybody...... so if you just happened to drop by and see this, it doesn't entitle you to much more than a "Who the hell are you?" If I don't happen to know you from say......Adam's house-cat

Yay Auburbama!

As everyone with eyes and ears may already know, this weekend will mark the occurance of perhaps one of the biggest football events Birminghamsters look forward to. Yup....The Iron Bowl. And, as all 8 of the folks that fix TV's in the region know, crunch time!

This is the week that fans all over town, in anticipation of hosting gatherings of friends and rivals, decide that they have gone too long watching the 13" TV perched upon their unreasonably large and long defunct big screen and order frantic (and often fruitless) service calls.

It's also the week that I have to say, "Sorry, but I'm booked solid up to NEXT Friday.","No, I can't get parts for your unit in time." and my favorite, "Last June? I'll try, but I think your time to file a claim with insurance might have expired".

To all the one's that thought of their needs last week:
Kudos, and thank you very much....You've collectively saved my ass!

To anyone waking up and expecting me to magically s#!t a part on the living room floor and stuff it into their sportsbox:
Sorry, thanks for calling!

November.....ah...now this is better!

Getting into the meat of the month now, and what can I say? Things are looking up.

It would seem that the slow season has passed in the world of TV repair. I was able to make a sizable deposit to the company account and make certain that I got the backpay I was so nervously missing (NOT that this will keep me from leaving this place as soon as possible!)

Truck has mysteriously stopped swapping fluids (and I do mean mysteriously)....It could have been packing oil trapped in the water jacket of the engine, or some wierdness of breaking in, but WTF! I didn't need that kind of a scare. In all my years of tinkering with machines I've never seen the like of this being anything less than a grim portent of very bad things, now I'm a bit confused, cautiously relieved, but still confused.

Another relief came in an encounter with Miss H (Remember the strange - and I don't mean to use that term lightly in this case - young lady who showed up on my doorstep with the TV, beer and chihuahua?). She snuck up behind me and did the whole "hands-over-the-eyes-guess-who" routine while I was waiting on payment for a side job. Naturally, I couldn't guess who (and as experience has taught, I knew better than to try). She had vanished, didn't answer calls, heck, she completely disappeared for nearly 4 months...so I was pleased that I was able to see her again unaccompanied by an 800 number and the words "Last seen....". I nodded and smiled amid a flurry of excuses, happy enough to see her alive that I didn't feel a need to bitch her out about the disappearing act. Truth is that I had written her off as a lost cause months ago. One of these days, she'll remember to get her TV back and I might see her again, but for now I can be satisfied in the knowledge that it was not something I said or did and I'm at least 180% better off for listening to my internal voice of reason and not pursuing a relationship with the little pixie!

I hope that this trend continues!

I'm back, what did I miss?

Gawd! What a month.
I must say that I'm more than happy to see the passing of October. Too much stress:

Family stress- a trip to Indiana that climaxed with a panic attack in full view of my parents (I only have one or two of these a year, just my dumb luck that it would have to hit me then and there, reinforcing my mother's belief that it would be best if I just moved back in with her and Dad).

Job stress - I just may have killed the business with those two days off, been dumping a truckload of resumes and aps off, had to cut my own pay in order to keep the business running in the meantime. A meeting with the accountant, "If you fix my TV I'll forgive the unpaid fee." was not very heartening.

Financial stress- had to take on more side jobs as the business fails; if not for any other reason, to make sure I don't wind up pennyless and homeless if the shop tanks before I get another job.

Truck stress- I just had a new engine put in the damn thing last February, now it's leaking oil into the coolant. Warranty? sure. All I gotta do is bring the engine back to Autozone, and they'll order me a new one (allowing 2-3 weeks for delivery). Then after it's installed I should recieve a check for the mechanic's fee..... in about 3 to 4 weeks after sending the final bill. Question at hand, will I need the $5oo for other things in the 2 months or so that it's tied up in the process?

At least I'm not still married........ and have no children to support!