Jon Levine

So I come home Friday after work and grab my dog to take her for a walk, as I normally do.  Leaving through the back of the

Broken(?) Samsung 56" DLP

building as required when exiting with a pet, I came out of the door nearest the trash.  There, sitting amongst the discarded foodstuffs and mixed recyclables, I spied a 56″ Hi-Def Samsung DLP TV resting next to the empty box of a new 36″ LCD TV. Pausing for a second, I quickly deduced that someone’s TV had broken and they decided to purchase a new one.  Normally, I wouldn’t give this any more thought, but I happen to own a Samsung DLP (a 46″ incher that I love) and know a little bit about them.  So, I continued to think about it as I accompanied my dog Penny as she took care of business.

As I walked with my dog, I thought about what could be wrong with the TV that someone would just discard it.  I arrived at three conclusions.  Either there was a power surge and the electronics were fried, which made it worthless; the bulb had burned out, which is easily replaced; or the color wheel had gone bad, which can also be replaced, but not as easily.  As I walked back into the building, I decided to investigate further.

I parked Penny back upstairs, grabbed my folding hand-truck and headed back to the trash heap.  After much struggle, I was able to wrangle this bumba back in to my condo.  I plugged into the wall and fired it up.  To my surprise, it turn on and the lamp lit up, so no, it wasn’t fried and the bulb was still good.  Then I heard the loud humming and grinding sound that is the tell-tale sign of a bad color wheel.  So, I shut it down and did a little research.

Color Me Bad

After a little spelunking through Google, I found this website that not only sold the replacement part, but also gave step by step instructions on how to install it.  I also stopped by my friend Scott Jangro’s site, where he put up an awesome article on diagnosing and fixing Samsung DLPs. The part was a little over $100, so I figured I’d take the gamble and see if I could make this work.  But then it occurred to me:  already having a Samsung DLP, I wondered if the same color wheel could be used in both units.  A little more Googling gave me the answer:  yes, they were the exact same part!

I woke up bright and early Saturday morning and began my mission:  removing the bad color wheel from the ‘trash’ TV and replacing it with the salvaged one from my current TV.  I followed the instructions that I found online and, after about 40 minutes, had made the transplant.  Now, the moment of truth.  I plugged the TV, flipped it on, and what do you know?  I had  a perfect picture!  I successfully resurrected a 56″ Hi-Def TV from the grave and gave myself another ten inches to watch football with.

New 56" Hi-Def Goodness

To put a capper on the story, my dad is going to pay the $100 for a new color wheel to put into my old 46″ and he’s going to upgrade from his 36″ CRT.  It’s a win-win-win for everyone involved… well, except for the person who tossed what turned out to be a perfectly good TV!

Have you ever had one of those days where everything is going right?  You wake up refreshed and ready to take on the day? Traffic is light and there’s no line at Starbucks?  Your boss, for whatever reason, thinks every idea you have is a good one and sales are up for no reason at all?  You get an unexpected present and just feel like a million bucks?

Then, you get kicked in the nuts.

There you are, having the best day you’ve had in weeks, when all of a sudden you come around the corner and run smack dab into your ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.  Boy, that’s fun, let me tell you.  The whole day of good shoved into the garbage disposal which is then run with no water.

This sucks.

Jack Welch, the former Chairman and CEO of the GE corporation, was know amongst his industry peers as ‘Neutron Jack’. The reason being, is because when he finished restructuring a company, the only thing left standing was the building. The reference is to that of a neutron bomb, which destroys all biological material (people), while leaving everything else intact.  I found another use for this reference when it comes to iPhoto and previous relationships.

I have an Apple TV which I use to display slide shows on the big screen in my living room of the photos kept on my Mac.  What I have found is that while this is an extremely useful feature, it can cause some concern when you have a date over and photos of you and your ex are dancing about on the screen.

Of course, the first instinct is to just exclude the photos sets that contain pictures of my ex.  However, that destroys most of the photos that have been taken over the last year.  Using such blunt tactics would literally leave a ‘photo hole’ in my life for nearly a twelve-month period.  I knew there had to be a better way and, after a little tinkering, I found it.

The latest release of iPhoto comes with a feature called ‘Faces‘.  This feature culls through your photo collection, or any new photos you upload, and does its best to recognize and tag the people in the picture.  It works fairly well (after some training), but I won’t get into a review here.   The feature is intended to allow the user to be able to quickly pull up all pictures in your collection that contain specific, or groups of, people.  So, for example, you can create a ‘Smart Album’ of only photos that contain your mom and dad.  iPhoto will look through your collection and pull out any photos that contain a person tagged as your dad and one tagged as your mom.  If it’s just of your mom (0r dad) it won’t show.

Getting back on point, I wondered why I couldn’t do this in reverse.  I wanted to set up an album that contained only photos that didn’t have my ex in them, but still left in pictures of the events and places that we were at.  So, I went into the parameter settings of creating a Smart Album and, lo and behold, there was a setting for ‘Face’ and ‘Is Not’.  I typed in my ex-girlfriend’s name and BAM!  Back were all the weddings we went to, without a shot of her in sight.  Back were the birthday parties we attended, minus the shots of me and her standing next to each other.  Even showing up were the pictures of when she moved into her house, only showing me carrying some boxes!

With this feature, I was able to ’surgically remove’ her from the pictures in my past without losing the memories of being there.  Sure, I’ll remember that she was a part of it, but at least I don’t have to explain to the new girl sitting on the couch next to me who that is that I’m kissing on the beach.