
Okay, Gateway wasn’t going to be any help so I turned to the Interwebs. As you might recall from the start of this saga, I was not the only person who had the flickering monitor problem. Real Geeks had troubleshooted (troubleshot?) the problem to a specific chip on a specific board in the monitor. Apparently there is an overheating/poor-manufacturing problem that causes the chip to pull away from the board. But the chip could be reflowed. With the help of Lon Jungemann, I gave this a try. It did not work. So now, instead of a monitor that flickered, I had a monitor that just stayed black. Not necessarily an improvement.
Oh well, I tried. I was about to throw it in the trash recycle it responsibly when I recalled reading when I was searching for a fix that people did actually repair these. So on the off chance that someone would need parts, I put it on eBay. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone, so it had a big, “not working. for parts only” in the listing. In fact, I didn’t include any information on it at all. I figured that only someone who knew what they were doing would bid on so sparse a listing.
Maybe I could make $50 toward my next monitor.
That’s right, $304.99 for my broken monitor. The winning bidder was John Harlan he goes by johnslcdrepair, johnhis11_computers, xhd3000repairman43560 as well as computerguru43560 (if you’ve found this post by searching for any of those names, you’ll want to read the next parts of this post as well –how’s that for foreshadowing?), and also had several of these monitors listed on eBay. So he knew what he was getting into. He asked some questions about how I had tried to reflow the chip before he bid, so everything seemed fine.
But he didn’t pay right away, and after a week went by another bidder contacted me and said that he had recently been outbid on several of these monitors by John Harlan and wanted to know if I would sell the monitor to him if this sale fell through. We even agreed on a price (he started at $25 and I started at $304.99 and we met at $250). So I opened a “did not pay” dispute with eBay. Shortly thereafter John sent the money via PayPal. Now, in his defense, John did tell me that he was a little tight on money and would take a few days to pay (but not more than a week). But John did win the bid, and had sent payment, so we packaged the monitor up.
I didn’t want it to arrived damaged, so we packed it in two separate boxes. One for the flat screen and speaker bar and one for the bulky stand and power supply. Lauren helped and documented the process, because it looked like it might make a good post…
Yes, that’s a screen covered with a towel then 1/2 inch thick Styrofoam then 1/8 inch thick plexiglass then 2 layers of bubble wrap then surrounded by air bags on all sides.
You’d think everything would be well, right? .)
Read the continuing saga in part three.
Ha! Two Laurens!
Were you packing that monitor for the mail, or for the apocalypse?
Yeah – two giant hands now, too.
It was an entire evening of packing, and the use of lots and lots and lots of tape.
Your drawn hand is in perfect proportion with your drawn face. Hold up your real hand to your face & see that I’m right. (I sure hope you didn’t think I was critizing your hand….I swear I just saw that episode & just had to share. If you ever get a chance to watch that episode, you will not be disappointed. Be sure you have gone to the bathroom first)
It’s not the hand that bothers me so much, it’s that finger. Why’d I draw the knuckle lines and a fingernail?
It’s a very unflattering cartoon.
I’m on the edge of my seat! I can’t wait until tomorrow’s installment of SOYJH!
To John Harlan or :
http://splicd.com/TWHOIowtzXA/0/4
And the plot thickens.
This is like waiting for the season finale of Battlestar Galactica!
Are you sure this is done in five parts or ten?
John Harlan
john harlan, john harlan, john harlan, john harlan
(Just trying to help out the search engines.)
Most search engines are smarter than that now. Repeated words probably lower your page rank for that term if they are out of context.
Nuts. Okay I’ll stop. But you are on the first page on Google when you search for his name. I was just trying to get you higher on the page.
I thought you were doing the Bloody Mary thing and trying to make him appear in a mirror.