Worth a Thousand Words

A few years ago when I became a father, I received a gift of a metal picture frame that says "Dad" on the bottom.  Inside the frame is a photograph of me holding my infant daughter while she sleeps.  It is a nice photo, and I understand the meaning behind it, but there is some confusion at work here.

The thing is, these types of picture frames always bother me because of the whole built-in purpose.  Since the frame says "Dad" I can't exactly just put a newer photo of my daughter in it without me being in the photo... because that would be odd.  Also, shouldn't the photo really be a photo of my dad rather than a picture of me as a dad?  Would it be weird to have a photo of me alone in it?  I mean I'm the dad... so isn't that what the frame is for?

If I had a frame that said daughter, I wouldn't expect me to be in the photo, but I would expect it to be a photo of my daughter.  Same is true if the frame said "Best Friend"... that wouldn't be a photo of me, but rather a photo of a best friend right?  Of course if the frame said "Best Friends" then I would expect to see an image of two people... one of which could be me.  If I saw a photo of just one person the context is just wrong and it wouldn't make sense unless that person happened to suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder.

So what about those frames that say "I Love You" on the bottom.  I would seem rather conceited if I put a photo of myself in one of those frames wouldn't I?  Even if I was in the photo with someone else it still would border on being a bit too vain.  So in that case I suspect it would be best to insert a photo of a loved one that I actually did love.

It gets even more confusing when the frame has a name on it.  So if I had a frame that said "Tom" on the bottom, I assume that means I would have a photo of Tom in the frame.  Of course this means I would need to know a Tom, but I suppose if worse came to worse I could just print out an image of that MySpace guy.

So if a picture frame with a name on it is designed to have a photo of that person in it, it seems that any frame that says "Dad" should have a picture of Dad in it... but not necessarily me, but rather it seems to make more sense to have a photo of my dad - or I should just put in a photo of me and then give the frame to my daughter.  She is only 2 1/2 years old... so I'm guessing she probably wouldn't put nearly as much thought into this as I do... so that would probably work.

On second thought... maybe the picture frame companies need to start including directions on these things to make it easier.  They do of course give you stock images in the frames most of the time (see photo above), but even those are confusing because in some dad frames it just shows one guy while in others it shows a man and child.  I even saw one that had two girls in it which is even more confusing, and one had a girl with a dog which suggests either they are being very liberal with the meaning of the term "dad" or they are from the deep South where that type of thing is considered normal.

I suppose I could be the only person on the planet who has ever given this subject much thought, but hey... if we allow people to just start putting random photos in random frames with no structure behind it before you know it the poles of the Earth could reverse, dogs will be sleeping with cats, and we might actually see a Republican say something positive about President Obama.

Yea I know - it will never happen.

Repairing a Samsung LCD TV With Clicking Relays (LNT4661F)

This is a write-up on how to repair a Samsung TV that experiences problems powering up.  The most common symptoms of this failure include the sound of clicking relays when the TV is powered up, and the red LED indicator on the front of the TV may flash on and off.


Typically after the relays click a few times, the TV will eventually come on.  However in time the relays will need to click on and off more and more times before the TV will come on... and eventually the TV will likely just cycle the relays over and over and it will never come on.


If you just want the instructions on how to do this repair, skip to step 1 below.  If you want my personal saga explaining why I decided to perform this repair myself... read on.


In my case, I have experienced this failure on two separate occasions.  I originally bought this TV back in 2008, and sometime within the first year I began to hear the dreaded clicking relays suggesting there was a problem.  About a week after this started I was watching TV one evening and all of the sudden it sounded like a firecracker went off inside of the TV.  From experience I knew this meant a capacitor most likely blew up... however since the TV was still under warranty I wasn't about to crack it open to investigate.


I placed a call to Samsung and started the saga of getting the TV repaired.  Long story short the process involved at least half a dozen calls, several weeks of waiting for parts and a technician, and having to take a day off of work to be around when the service tech actually showed up.  Did I mention that the TV failed about a week before the Superbowl and there was no way to get it fixed before the game?  Yea... perfect timing.


Eventually the technician showed up and as soon as he opened the back of the TV and removed the shield from the circuit board it was very obvious which capacitors had blown.  The technician removed and replaced the power supply board with an updated version, and then closed the TV up at which time we tested it and verified it was working as good as new.


That was early 2009... and up until a few weeks ago the TV worked fine.  However around two weeks ago I noticed when the TV was powered up the red LED on the front seemed to blink several times before it would power up.  Then a few days after that, the dreaded clicking relays started.  As the days progressed it took longer and longer for the TV to power up and it became obvious it was only days away from another total failure.


I did a bit of research and discovered I wasn't alone.  In fact many users of this particular model of television (the Samsung LNT4661F 46 inch LCD HDTV) had experienced the same symptoms, and it all boiled down to bad capacitors.  It seemed there were a few ways to fix it... the easiest of which is to simply replace the power supply board.  However with a little bit of electronics knowledge and some replacement capacitors... it is much less expensive to simply replace the bad capacitors rather than bearing the expense of the entire circuit board.


Therefore in order to verify the issue I removed the back of the TV along with the metal shielding that covers the power supply board and with a little inspection it was very obvious which capacitors were failing.  As you can see from the image below, two of the capacitors show signs of failure and are bulging.  One of them was even showing a crack on the top which means it was probably days before a total failure.

Reading the specs from the side of the capacitors showed that they were 10V caps rated at 2200uF and had a max operating temperature specification of 105°C.  In my case it was only these two capacitors that were failing, however others have reported that the 1000uF capacitors directly beside the 2200uF caps had also failed.


In any case, now that I knew what the source of the issue was, I decided it was time to order some replacements.  However based upon markings on the board as well as information I had found online, it seems 10V capacitors are simply too small which is what contributed to the premature failure.  It appears this particular circuit was designed for 12V capacitors yet Samsung decided to use 10V caps instead.  It stands to reason why they wouldn't last.  Therefore, in order to prevent this from happening again I opted to replace the caps with 16V capacitors, but others have used 24V or even 50V replacements... it is just a matter of what is available.  A higher voltage capacitor doesn't mean it will run at a higher voltage... merely that it is capable of handling that voltage.  In this case, having a little extra buffer was a good thing as the caps would be running at a voltage well under spec.


It just so happens a friend of mine was in the process ordering some parts for himself, so he just added a few of the capacitors to his order and they were on the way.  In the meantime, it was time to get started removing the old capacitors and prepping the board for the replacements.


Step 1: Remove the power supply board.  Ok so technically step 1 would be remove the back of the TV and then remove the shield covering the board itself... but if you can't figure that part out on your own you probably shouldn't even attempt to replace the capacitors yourself.  


To remove the board, you will want to disconnect all of the various connectors that run into the board and then remove the six screws that hold the board down to the mounting plate / chassis.  It isn't a bad idea to take a photo to ensure you get all of the connectors in the right places upon re-installation (or just use my photo as a guide).  The capacitors being replaced are shown at the upper right hand corner of this board.

Step 2:  Desolder the old capacitors.  In my case, this involved CM852 and CM853.  You can see from the image below what the top of the board looks like after the capacitors have been removed.  I won't go into great detail here about how to actually desolder these since it is assumed if you are attempting this you have some basic knowledge on how to use a soldering iron, but it is helpful to have some desoldering braid and/or a solder sucker (desoldering pump) to remove the old solder as you heat up the leads.  

And this is what the bottom of the board looks like after the capacitors have been removed.  Note that there are polarity markings on both sides of the board.  Try not to apply too much heat to the board as you don't want to inadvertently harm the solder traces on the board.

Step 3:  Paying attention to the polarity of the capacitors (the shaded area of the board corresponds to the negative lead of the capacitor), insert the leads of the replacement capacitors through the holes in the circuit board and bend them outward to hold the capacitors tight against the board.  Apply heat to each lead and solder them in place.

Step 4:  Using a side cutters, trim the leads of the capacitors.  Some may prefer to cut the leads prior to soldering, but I prefer to do so after they are soldered in place just in case I need to make any adjustments.  After trimming, verify the solder joints are intact and are solid.  The image below shows the end result from the bottom of the board.

And this is what the new capacitors look like from the top of the board.  The new caps were slightly larger than the originals, but they fit just fine.

Here is another side angle showing the new capacitors in place.  Several of the other original caps (the lighter blue caps in the image) may also need to be replaced if they show signs of failure, but in my case they all appear ok.

Step 5:  Reinstall the power supply board back into the TV chassis.  Tighten all six mounting screws, and ensure all of the various connectors are reconnected properly.  Once everything looks ok, reinstall the metal shield that covers the power supply board as shown in the image below.

If there is any doubt about the location of the various connectors... simply refer to the image in step 1 above.  However aside from forgetting to actually install one, it is nearly impossible to do  this step incorrectly since aside from the two in the lower left corner, all of the connectors are unique.

Step 6:  Reattach the back of the TV, install the stand and/or wall mount cover plate... connect the TV to a video source, plug it in, power it up and enjoy!

Step-Brothers Anyone?

The replacement capacitors cost under a buck each plus a few bucks for shipping, so the end result was a repair for around $5.  I had the soldering iron, soldering braid, and solder on hand already so there was no additional cost there.  Total time from start to finish (not counting the time I was awaiting parts delivery) was approximately 20 minutes.


Considering the cost for a technician to come out and replace the board could easily top $300... I think this repair is more than worth it.  With a little luck the third time will be a charm so hopefully I won't need to do this again!


If you found this post helpful, or if you have any questions about the process, please leave a comment and let me know.

The Voice.... That Carries

Recently I was speaking with a group of co-workers and the topic of "noisy people" came up.  Anyone who has ever worked in an office environment with more than three people probably understands there is always that one person who is much louder than everyone else, and where I work (due to the number of people who share the space) we have more than a handful.

There are quite a few different types of noisy people ranging from the person who has no concept of their own volume when speaking a phone, to the type of person who feels a laugh needs to be at least 90 dB to be effective, to the type of person who likes to watch ESPN clips on their computer with the volume cranked.  My personal favorite however is the person who wears headphones while listening to music and doesn't realize that when they decide to talk they are now about three times louder than they need to be.  That's always a crowd pleaser especially when they decide to drop an f-bomb in a professional environment (and even worse is when you sit near them and are on a conference call with a sensitive mic).

The thing is, in this particular group of co-workers that I was speaking with, everyone pretty much mentioned the same person as being noisy, so it isn't like I'm the only one who has recognized it.  Actually, rather than mince words I'll just call her loud, because in essence that is what she is.  The best part is everyone knows she is loud.  She has been told she is loud.  People have been known to sneak up to her desk and turn up the volume on her phone in the hopes it might help to reduce her speaking volume (since in theory she would hear her own voice being fed back into the earpiece on her phone and adjust volume accordingly), but basically there isn't much that has worked. 

Now I don't want to make it seem like this is a huge annoyance or that it is disturbing, because for the most part it is just one of those things you deal with in life.  Some people are loud, some are quiet just as some people are friendly and some are bitter at everyone and everything around them.  Whether someone is loud or not just isn't that big of a deal because it is fairly easy to tune them out if you aren't directly engaged in a conversation with them, and frankly this particular person is friendly and outgoing and the type of person who I am happy to have as a colleague, so the fact she is a tad louder than those around her is a relatively minor point.

The interesting thing about this particular woman however is that she knows and acknowledges that she is loud and that her voice is typically at a volume level in excess of what is considered normal.  This is where I tend to hear the oh-so-common excuse when the conversation of loud people comes up where she openly stated she is loud because she has "one of those voices that carry so well".  Really?  You just magically have a voice that carries better than the voices of other human beings?  I find that interesting.

There is a lot of science behind sound and I don't want to get off on a tangent here, but basically a sound wave is comprised of characteristics such as the frequency (the pitch of the sound itself), amplitude (think of that as volume), wavelength (which is inversely proportional to frequency), intensity, and pressure.  Now although it is true that different frequencies of sound are detected by the human ear at various volume levels (the human ear does not have a flat spectral response), for the most part the difference between volume levels within the frequency range of human speech is not all that significant.

This is a long way of saying that person A's voice does not differ dramatically from person B's voice when looked at in terms of a sound wave.  There is no physics magic that allow the sound waves of one person to travel farther than the other given the same volume level and (approximate) frequency, and for all intents and purposes a voice is a voice in terms of how far it can go.  There may be differences on who can hear that voice of course, but as a whole that isn't really an issue when speaking about a group who is all listening to the same person unless they were all hard of hearing or if they all had better-than-average hearing (which I somehow doubt is the case in my example).

So when someone says they have a voice that travels so well or a voice that carries so well... they are basically just repeating something they heard once with no understanding of how silly they actually sound (no pun intended).  The fact is, for all intents and purposes if someone has a voice that "carries well" it is likely due to the fact that they talk louder than everyone around them.  Thus a distance X, person A with amplitude Y they will obviously be heard better than person B with amplitude Z assuming a comparable frequency and Y being greater than Z.

So yea... sometimes a loud person is just a loud person, and an excuse is just an excuse.  Chances are if someone has a voice that carries better than those around them... it has less to do with physics and a whole lot more to do with them just being loud (and in some cases annoying as well).

The more you know.

Stupid People: The “I Fail To Learn My Lesson” Person

A mechanic I know told me a story about a woman who came in to have her passenger side mirror replaced on her car. The thing was… it wasn’t the first time. This woman had the same mirror replaced four or five times on a car she had owned for only a couple of years because she would continually break it off while backing out of her garage.

Now I can accept someone breaking off a mirror… I even did something similar once myself while trying to squeeze around a car parked in the middle of the driveway. I might even be able to accept someone doing it twice when they failed to learn the lesson the first time or maybe were driving a different vehicle. However, if you break off the same mirror four or five times in a span of two years, how smart could you possibly be? How many times do you actually need to do something stupid before you stop and ask yourself how you can prevent from it happening again?

Since hearing this story I often have wondered what someone like that does for a living. What if she was a doctor or a dentist or worse – a politician. I’m not sure stupidity is isolated to only one area of the brain, so needless to say if this was my doctor I’d be finding myself a new doctor, and if this was my politician… I’d probably move to a new district as I would be embarrassed to be represented by an idiot.

I also see stupid people who get married and divorced time and time again. You see celebrities who have been married seven or eight times and they end up divorced over and over again. Don’t you think that after your fourth or fifth failed marriage you might stop to think – hey maybe this whole marriage thing isn’t for me because I clearly suck at it? Sure you can blame a few marriages on the other person, but when you are filing for your seventh divorce I think it is safe to say you haven’t learned your lesson and likely never will.

I fully realize we all do stupid things, but most of us learn from our mistakes and hopefully do our best to prevent making those same mistakes time and time again. However the more and more I look around me, the more and more stupid people I see. This is precisely why tax preparation companies are so popular during tax season, because if a person can’t manage to back out of their garage without breaking off their mirror time and time again, or if they can’t manage to have a successful marriage after six or seven attempts, they aren’t very likely to be able to fill out a tax return even if they only need the 1040EZ form.

You often hear people say that people are smart but they just do stupid things. I have to say I totally disagree with that. There was a Seinfeld episode where Jerry asked Elaine what percentage of people she thought were good looking and she answered twenty-five percent. Jerry then said “Twenty-five percent, you say? No way! It's like 4 to 6 percent. It's a twenty to one shot.”

I don’t know if I would go so far as to say 4 to 6 percent is the magic number, but there is no way I would claim that more than 20% of the human race is considered smart. I’m not even going so far as to say you have to hold a PhD or understand advanced level thermodynamics or quantum theory here… I’m merely talking about the amount of people who don’t do or say stupid things on a regular basis.

I hate to sound negative, but I’d estimate 80% of our population is comprised of stupid people, which probably explains the popularity of things like the Snuggie, vaccine-causing-autism conspiracy theories, Jersey Shore, and the belief that there really is such a thing as Bigfoot.

Stupid People: The “I Can’t Grasp The Concept Of Volume” Person (Volume 5)

This will likely be the last in my series of “volume related” stupid people stories although I’m sure I could easily write another dozen or so if I was up to it. This last episode is one of my personal favorites and sticks in my memory like it happened yesterday. I’ve told this story to several people over the years, and for some reason even after almost 20 years since it actually occurred, I still find it rather comical.

I was working in the back room of ShopKo stocking shelves and doing whatever it is I normally did in the course of my shift when I received a page for a delivery (yes we carried pagers… needless to say this was the 90s). I called up to the register and was told a gentleman had just purchased a swing set and needed it carried out.

Now normally we would have the person drive around back and we would load the swing set there, but that required a manager to unlock the rear door and at the time none of them were in the immediate area. Rather than chase one of them down and waste the customer’s time, I decided to just grab another fellow employee and have him help me get it loaded onto two carts.

Keep in mind the largest swing sets came in boxes that were about 10 feet long, two feet wide, and 12-18 inches tall or so. I don’t remember the weight, but we generally would not even try to handle them alone. So in this case we placed a rolling flatbed under each end and proceeded to drive it to the front of the store as if it was one of those hook and ladder (fire) trucks you see with a guy on the front and the back both steering.

When we met the customer the first question out of my mouth even before bothering to haul this thing any further was to ask him what type of vehicle he drove. He immediately understood what I was getting at once he saw the size of the box, and he told me he drove a full size van, so it would not be a problem fitting it inside. Admittedly I was very relieved to hear this, so we followed him out the door and to his van.

When I saw the van I was extremely happy. Not only was this a full size van, but it was one of those extended vans with two full doors on the back to make access extremely easy. However, as soon as he opened the doors I saw a problem. The van was full of bench seats because it wasn’t really a cargo van – it was a 14 passenger van… and the seats did not fold down nor were they removable (without tools at least). The swing set was too large to fit under the seats, so our options were somewhat limited.

No problem – the customer just told us to lay it across the top of the seats and he would haul it that way. I knew it would fit so that wasn’t the issue, but I wasn’t sure the seats would appreciate having a heavy swing set laid on top of them and even worse I knew if he had to stop suddenly this could be a huge safety issue.

Long story short the guy just didn’t care. He was willing to take the risk and I knew I wasn’t liable if anything happened, so we proceeded to lift the swing set onto the seats, slide it forward and shut the rear doors. The front of the box was right between the two head rests of the front seat so at least if he had to slam on his brakes it would crush the dash and/or windshield rather than his skull, but I still thought it was a pretty stupid idea.

However, it was about that time that I turned around and noticed a woman with what appeared to be at least seven or eight kids standing there staring at us. Apparently this woman was his wife, and these were his kids. They were shopping alone which is why they weren’t around while we were loading this whole thing.

Now keep in mind this swing set rested on top of the seats so although a kid could lay on the seat or hunch over, there was no way possible to actually sit up straight in the middle of each row, and those who did sit up straight on the sides were risking head injury each time the van would turn a corner and the swing set would inevitably slide along the top of the seats (because it goes without saying the guy wasn’t interested in fastening this thing down).

As the woman opened the side doors, these kids proceeded to pile in the van one by one… each of them bending their heads in what would appear to be a very uncomfortable position in order to fit around and under the swing set.

Now if this guy was merely driving across town this might not be such an interesting story, but after seeing his contorted kids wedge themselves around the swing set I just had to ask where they were headed. The guy told me where he lived but I wasn’t aware of the town (and have long since forgot what it was called), but I do remember him saying it was about a two hour drive.

Not only was this guy going to be driving at highway speeds with a huge cardboard encased steel projectile capable of decapitation, but he was going to do so with his tribe of children wedged and squeezed around it just for good measure… for two hours.

Without so much as a shred of concern for the comfort or safety of his family, he pulled away as I stood there with mental images of a horrific traffic accident with random children impaled upon swing set parts and a rescue worker wondering who would ever be stupid enough to load a swing set on to the tops of the seats of a fully loaded passenger van.

Once again – people are stupid, and in this case I was probably an accessory to the stupidity.