Mechanical Hell

 Have you ever noticed that some guys are just naturally gifted handymen.  I'm not one of those guys. I rely on the integrity of the gifted ones to help me out.You take your car in because it's not running right and they can look at it and know right away what the problem is. "Well Mr. Botts, it's obvious that the bungflogger here has become disengaged with the hornwiller, so the flipstopper isn't going around." That's all very entertaining, but I haven't got a clue what they're talking about.  I can only hope I don't have to take out a second mortgage on the house to pay to fix it. A few weeks ago our Samsung TV crapped the bed. It started off with not wanting to turn on with the remote control. I'd always heard that you do the simplest thing first, so I replaced the batteries with a fresh pair. It didn't help.I was standing in front of the TV pushing the on button like my life depended on it, but to no avail. I felt like I was a contestant on Jeopardy trying desparitely to answer the question, but the button doesn't work.So then I got online and read that sometimes if you unplug the TV from the back, it will fix it. So I tried that and, miracle of miracles, it did work. At least for a few days. After that was no longer effective,  I tried unplugging the TV from the wall outlet, and that worked for a few days as well, but eventually that also failed, so we sat like a couple of  monkeys staring at the blank screen willing it to come on until we finally acknowledged that it was dead.  I spoke to a friend who said it was probably the mother board, and to contact a place called Shop Jimmy. They claim to have hundreds of thousands of parts for televisions in stock. I looked them up and It certainly appeared that they had tons of parts- just not the one I needed. Not only did they not have it, but there isn't even a remote chance that they'll get it. Go figure. They did have a little black chip with metal tabs on the ends that they emphasize MAY fix the problem, so for twenty bucks I bought it. On line it looked like the size of a bread box, but when I received it in the mail, I thought the package was empty. The part was so small I needed a magnifying glass to see the little metal tips. I ended up taking the back off the TV but I couldn't even find a part that looked anything like the one they sent me, and if I'd had, soldering it would have required the skills of a robot in a factory. Of course because it's electrical, there's no sending it back for a refund, which is just as well, because by the time you've paid for shipping both ways, even though it weighs less than a gnat, it ends up costing more than the part itself. Lovely. I procrastinated for awhile and finally decided to order a TV from Best Buy up in Anchorage. I thought they would send it to me from there, but nooooooooo... its coming from Oklahoma somewhere. It flew UPS and made every stop from Oklahoma City to Pacific Washington where they finally pawned it off to the U.S. Postal Service in Federal Way Washington, where I can only assume it's on it's way on the barge. I'm not a big fan of the Federal Way distribution center. We've had more than a few problems with getting stuff that comes through there.The local postmaster assures me that it should be here in another nine days. By the time I get it, assuming it's in working condition after being manhandled like a hooker at a longshoreman convention, it will probably be a relic. But that's not all! Oh no, no, no, there's more. I was making a CD on my  computer for a friend the other day when the machine started making a squirelly noise and all of a sudden there was loud POP. I managed to kind of get the CD drawer open and I could see dozens of pieces of CD hanging out inside. Thinking it was a minor fix I grabbed my little shop vac and tried to vacuum them all out.  Well, that worked about as well as anything else I attempt, so I ended up turning the computer upside down trying to shake out the little shards. There was quite a pile of them on the desk, but the drawer still won't close. All the shaking apparently shook something loose and I ended up having to go to the hardware store and buy a new ether cable. That didn't fix the CD, that just made the Internet work again.  My son-in-law, up in Wasilla said I probably need to get a new CD drive. Right now I'm waiting on another person to come and take apart the drive so I can see what I need to get to replace it. I wish I could say that that's all the mechanical issues I'm having, but it's not. Last spring I had a local mechanic rebuild the parts in my 1992 Chevy Silvarado truck transmission. It ran fine until he left for Missouri, now it's giving me problems again. The reverse doesn't want to engage and it revs up in low gear before finally finding second. Of course he won't be back until April, so I have to keep babying it, pouring five dollar a quart tranny fluid into it, hoping I don't get stuck somewhere. I know that in the grand scale of life, these problems are pretty minor, but there are times when I wish I had been born handy instead of so darn handsome.