Two days ago, I was flipping through the television channels as I always do. My wife was using the Internet for checking something, so I was hanging out with Yoshi. Suddenly, I noticed a problem with the screen. The lower half of the screen was still working, but the image at the top was shrunk to two thirds the size, with large black bars going across the screen horizontally.
Hmmm.
I told my wife about the problem, but it’s not like we watch that much television anyway. We talked about it for a little bit, then forgot it until today. We were sitting around before we had to go to work, so I turned on the television to show her what I had meant about the television being “strange”.
This time, the two black bars extended down the entire sizes of the screen. It made the screen look better, like there was some sort of reverse wide screen effect going on, but at least things were proportional again. We probably would have been satisfied with a broken but semi-functional television for our needs, but then we both started smelling ozone and smoke.
Minor electrical fire in the belly of the television perhaps? The television was at least a decade old. We had picked it up years ago for my old apartment used. It had served me well, and I don’t feel I got ripped off even if it is now a large plastic shell sitting in my living room.
I unplugged the set. We’re planning on selling it to the electronics recycle truck the next time he stops by the apartment complex. Since it’s been raining, we haven’t seen him in several days. He’ll help us carry the set out and offer us cash for the scrap parts. That’s certainly better than paying someone to take it away.
We went pricing new televisions today. No one is thinking of dropping two million won on a nice flat screen, but we saw some lower end units that could double as an over-sized computer monitor that I’d love to have. We’d have to snake wires through the house on the ceiling to get it to work, but I’m sure the delivery people would do that for us for a marginal fee. One wireless mouse and keyboard later, and I’ve got a new monitor for surfing on the couch!*
(A man can dream, can’t he?)
