Chip bought a 46″ TV from Sears the day before Christmas because he’s wanted one for such a long time.  Everyone we know has HDTV and all the new shows are widescreen so it’s natural to want a new one right?  It’s nice to have the latest technology and not be so out of the loop.

By the way if someone does a google search for it, it’s a Toshiba 46XV645U model.

So right away within the first week there was an issue with it.  It has this electronic sound, sort of like the Daleks in Doctor Who.  Right away we thought that it might be the cable boxes so we swapped boxes.  Then we thought it was the HDMI cable so we swapped, if you are wondering I got a 32-inch Panasonic HDTV for Christmas so we both got welcomed into the 21st century together.  Anyway, so we did all that we could to self diagnose the problem and it was still doing it.

I kept telling Chip to call Sears, maybe we can swap it out for a new tv but he didn’t want to because getting it home the night he bought it was a chore.  The box was too tall for his SUV and they wouldn’t let us have it until they knew that it was going to travel safely to the house.  They wouldn’t allow us to tip it sideways to get it into the car because it has to be upright to prevent the screen from breaking.  We sat there for an hour trying to figure out a way to get it home safe.  He called a taxi and got a van and I rode with the taxi.  He didn’t want to have to return it just to have to get a taxi to bring home the new one so he did nothing about it.

In mid January it was just too much for him so he called Sears.  Since he has an automatic 1 year warranty he figured that it wouldn’t be a problem for them to fix it without having to swap it out for another one.  They diagnosed the problem but had to order the part which was a motherboard.  They said they would send the guy out in 2 weeks and they were going to ship a motherboard for him to put inside of it, that was in early February when he finally came but no motherboard.  They didn’t order it like they said they were going to so he said it would be another 2 weeks to order the motherboard and he’d come out when we had it.

Ok so finally toward the end of February we got the motherboard and he came out and swapped it out and left.  Within a few hours it did it again.

So, it’s not the cable boxes or the HDMI cables and he swapped out the motherboard so what else is there?  So Chip called Bright house (our cable company).  The guy came out today and I showed him the video on my camcorder of what the issue was, it was more of a sound thing so he really listened to it and not watched.  He checked the cable line and he said it was perfect, nothing wrong with it.  And since my tv isn’t doing it then obviously it’s not the cable line.  He told me that the cable box doesn’t produce sound, it has speakers but it doesn’t provide sound to the tv, the signal provides sound from the HDMI cable.

He told me that he’s heard stories about Toshiba, not that particular model but that brand.  I mean, Toshiba… it’s a brand that has been around for such a long time.  I’ve never heard of this before or even any issues with such a reputable brand.

Well so after the cable guy leaves Chip called Sears again and tells them that he called Bright house, they came out and said it wasn’t the line and he said that he is so through with this tv and he wants a new one.  The guy told him that it’s too late.  It’s March now.  If he had brought this to their attention in December when he got the tv then no problem but he never called Sears once…  WHAT!?!?!  Are you fucking kidding me?  Sorry for the language but I mean come on!

Ok so after Chip tore him a new asshole for that little comment he patches him through to Toshiba and they finally tell him to check the firmware number which I mentioned at the beginning to Chip to ask Toshiba about the firmware and it was never brought up to Toshiba.  So the guy from Toshiba says that he’s going to send a USB drive with a firmware update.  The TV has a USB slot so I just plug that in there and it updates.  No problem.  Well, why didn’t they diagnose that in January when he got patched through to Toshiba when they diagnosed it as a motherboard issue?

No matter, it’s only going to take 7 days for us to get the USB drive with the new firmware.  We will see in 1 week if that does any good.  I’m sure it will because when I had an issue with my Panasonic DVD recorder freezing up they told me that it might be the firmware which I downloaded, burned to a DVD then installed it no problem.  They promised a disc which they never sent but that was ok since I downloaded it.  I did look on the Toshiba website but they didn’t have it available.  I think they should have it available for me to download and put it on a DVD or a USB drive to install it NOW.  But noooo, we gotta wait yet another week.  SIGH!!!

I’m so sick of this and I want it resolved.  I mean the TV cost $1000 plus taxes, you would think that Sears wouldn’t give him such a hard time with such an expensive thing.  Especially if they want to keep him as a customer.  He could have so easily gone over to Wal-Mart but he chose to do business with Sears because he trusts them and doesn’t want to give his money to such a dishonest and homophobic company, although that’s not why HE wouldn’t shop there, that’s my reason but still.  He would rather give the money to Sears and in this economy they need the repeat business so they should be so lucky that he chose them.

This and many other things that Sears has done to him has put such a bad taste in my mouth and this makes the taste even more sour.  I personally wouldn’t do business with them anymore because of how they treated him on the phone.  But that’s just me.  I do take bribes though hint hint wink wink Sears.

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I was reading the YouSayToo website today and found this gem called the Pencil Printer.  Although there wasn’t a lot of information on there, I thought I would add my 2 cents on the subject.

Here are the 3 images directly from the Yanko Design website.

To see the images in their full glory just go ahead and click them.  Return to this article with your back button to read on.

Without plagiarizing like on the YouSayToo site, I’d like to quote Yanko Design directly from their site then give my opinion about it.

“So you don’t want to join pencil stubs and make a long pencil. No worries, we have another alternative, how about using them to print on paper. Yes, like a printer that uses pencil to print your documents. Traditional don’t you think? I feel the concept gets even more radical because it proposes the use of eraser to erase off mistakes! Do I hear my office scream in delight; no more cartridge woes!”

This thing works by placing pencil stubs in the top of the printer.  It grinds the pencil stub (after you have taken off the eraser) then separates the “lead” from the wood shavings.  I’m not quite clear on how you get the wood shavings out by their conceptual drawings but I’m sure they are working on that.  But some how it seperates the 2 so all of the pencil lead powder or dust goes in one compartment for printing.  Then you place an eraser in the other compartment so it will erase the pages.

You might think that this is a waste of time because you might end up having to buy tons of pencils for it.  Well if you work in an office where you use a lot of pencils all day long and you end up just tossing the stubs then this is for you.  If you don’t then it’s a waste of time and money and so don’t worry about it.

Although this whole pencil printer is all just a concept I see a problem with their paragraph lol.  Ok, first of all how can you print and erase your mistakes during printing when it’s printing from a computer?  Hello?  The printer prints an exact copy of what is on your screen so how can it make a mistake?  So I don’t understand that but I think what they mean is you can place a piece of paper that you printed on with this thing then it will erase the whole page.  That sounds more like what I think that they meant.  Because what happens is you print something then find a mistake so then you correct it and print it again.  This way you can place the same sheet of paper in there and have it erase the whole document so you can print it out again.

Either way I think it’s a great idea for people in offices who want to print certain documents that are not meant to be legal copies.  There are so many times that I print something and it came out all wrong so I end up crumbling it and tossing it so being able to print with this thing to look it over to make sure I didn’t make a mistake would be good so I can then print the final copy on my regular ink jet printer and just have the pencil printer erase the paper I printed with pencil powder.  That way there is no wasted paper and ink.

Also what you could do is print with this pencil printer and if what you printed was perfect then just make a copy of it.  I’m not positive that it will come out as perfect as a copy as if you had just printed it with ink jet or laser jet but it might.

Was this whole document a tongue twister?  It was for me lol.

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Earlier today I posted about how Chips computer died, well you can add mine to that. All of a sudden it shuts down. You can turn it on then in a minute or so it shuts down again.

I think Chips computer needs a video card, I know he needs a new monitor. I’ve had this same issue with my computer before so I know it’s a memory issue.

So… video card, monitor and ram… I need to lay down now.

I can still blog on my PSP but it takes forever. So much for carpel tunnel.

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Chips computer finally died today. I don’t really know what the problem is so I can’t say that it died but I have a feeling I MIGHT know what the problem is but until we get some money it’s going to have to sit there and wait for repair. I built it in 2002 when my cousin gave me a motherboard +cpu for my birthday lol. So 8 years is a long time for a computer to work and so it’s passing was expected.

Like I said, I don’t know that it’s dead but when you turn it on you can hear the fan but nothing comes on the screen which could mean that it’s the video card which is very possible.  The CPU and motherboard are 8 years and his memory is only 1 or 2 years old, he wanted more than 256mb of ram so he bought a 1GB stick.  The hard drive is also 8 years and yes we should be backing that up too but his computer doesn’t have a dvd or even a cd burner and it’s really a pain to have to back everything up on floppys lol.

Oh and his monitor is messing up too.  There is a short in the wire at the monitor side.  You just touch the monitor and you can hear it clicking in the back so you have to fiddle with the wire and then you hear it click back on and the light comes on but one false move and it turns off again.  His monitor is about 10 years old and even though it still looks good this short could be an issue.  It’s not a short in the power cord but rather the cable that connects to the video card so perhaps that’s why his video card isn’t working.

So let’s see, he needs a new monitor which is about maybe $150-$200 for one of the new flat panel monitors, a video card which I could easily pay $20-$50 for because he doesn’t play games, all he needs is a card to be able to connect to his monitor with.  Although if he gets those there is no guarantee that will be what’s wrong because it’s very possible that the short in the monitor could have shorted the motherboard too.  I can’t say that the fan spinning was from the CPU because his tower has 3 fans, the case fan for the front and back and the power supply fan.

I have $100 saved up from blogging but that’s going to cover the video card that’s it.  But for now he is using my 6-year-old laptop that I never use because I’m afraid to because the warranty has expired last January 2009 and once the warranty for a Dell computer expires you can’t buy a new one.  Unfortunately it’s sooooooo slow which makes it very difficult to do anything because it takes like 10 minutes for his emails to load up lol.  Although once it’s been on for awhile it’s not as slow.  But you can’t have more than 1 thing running otherwise all of the system resources get taken up and you get a notice telling you so.  So I’m going to have to reformat it even though I did that a few months ago so I don’t know if that will help but it wouldn’t hurt.  I think what’s slowing it down is the virus software.

But at least he has a temporary computer for reading/writing emails and surfing the internet.  It’s temporary for him because he hates laptop keyboards and the touch pad.  I don’t have a USB mouse he can use for it but even if I did both USB slots are being used, 1 by the laptop fan underneath it and 1 by the USB Wifi card.  I have a PCMIA one but it doesn’t work.  I do have a USB hub so if he gets to the point where he NEEDS a USB mouse then we can get one for him at the local computer store.

It’s a bummer that I didn’t win at least 2nd or 3rd prize on the YouSayToo site so I could’ve at least gotten him a $500 computer.  I mean first prize would’ve been nice to buy him a $1000 computer but even a cheaper one would be better than nothing.  Magnets are nice for the fridge but they won’t help Chip read his emails you know?

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Window flower boxes are such an old idea and something that I have not really seen since I was a kid.  I really don’t know why people don’t have them anymore.  All you need is a simple window box then you fill it with some dirt from the garden section of Target or your local hardware stores garden section then put some plants in there.

We actually have a few garden window boxes in the back yard but they are dead.  It’s all dirt and the wood is so old it’s falling apart.  It was homemade so naturally it’s not that good anymore.  This website has all these window plant boxes to choose from and I think it will help curb appeal when trying to sell your house.  Or if you want to buy some to make your house look nice for the holidays.

They really aren’t that expensive and you can see how cool they look in the website when filled with lots of plants.  Window boxes can liven up the most bland house with all the colors that you can put into them and just being able to look at them you know you are going to take care of the plants.  I’m not much of a plant person but I’m sure when it comes to something like window box planters I would probably take better care of them knowing that it’s the first thing that people see when they drive by or when they walk up to the house.

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I’ve been really thinking about this a lot and I’m a bit miffed at the double standards of natural disasters.  Remember when Haiti had their disaster?  Every show of mine was off the air the night of the telethon.  Everyone made such a big deal over Haiti.  I even made a post with all the links and telephone numbers and donated all of my blog earnings to help Haiti.  It was all everyone was talking about.

Then last week there was an earthquake in Chile.  I heard about it once on the news then that was it.  A few stories on the internet but nobody really made a huge deal out of it.  It was like everyone wanted to help Haiti but they were like screw you Chile.

The US and UK and some other countries governments helped but it’s like the rest of the US couldn’t give a shit because there was no interruptions of my shows, there were no telethon’s with all the relevant singers/actors singing and taking phone calls for donations.  There were no ads to place on my website to give money to Chile.  There were no links for donations at all…

Do you see where I’m going?  It’s like everyone wanted to help Haiti but they were like “oh chile had a disaster?  eh.”

You know, the Chileans need help too because if you didn’t see the images from their disaster you should know that their buildings crumbled and hundreds of people were buried and dead and thousands are now homeless just like Haiti.

I went to the red cross website and they are accepting donations.

The thing that miffed me about this whole thing is not that people aren’t donating because I don’t know that they aren’t, it’s that there wasn’t as big deal about it as there was with Haiti.  It was a huge double standard or perhaps there was more of a sympathy for one race than the other because of Obama.  Maybe I’m wrong but it just looks that way to me.

Rant off.

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