A while back, I was at the office when my wife called to inform me that the 36-inch monster of a CRT TV in our living room had “died”. She relayed that as the boys were watching TV after school, the TV suddenly went completely black and white.

As she was telling me the news about the TV, my heart sank. I did not really want to have to buy a new TV. On one hand, this was the perfect excuse to get a new TV, as I previously did not have a good reason to get rid of a perfectly good TV. On the other hand, I hated to have to get rid of that TV, as it was not that old and served our needs just fine (up until the point where it suddenly went black and white). After a few unsuccessful Google searches to try to diagnose the reason the TV went black and white, and after a visit to Best Buy’s site, I warmed up to the idea of getting a new flat screen HDTV. I was even thinking about throwing in a new Apple TV with my new purchase, just for good measure.

If I were “smart”, I would have just left well enough alone. Instead of immediately taking the family to Best Buy when I got home from the office, I went into the living room and began to tinker with the TV’s settings in a last ditch effort to repair it (or at least try to formally diagnose the problem) before throwing in the proverbial towel. The results of my tinkering found that one of the boys had inadvertently changed the color settings. After restoring the color settings, our TV was as good as new. There would be no trip to Best Buy after all.

Oh well. Such is life. In retrospect, I am glad that I took a few minutes to fix the problem. I did not get the satisfaction of a new TV in my living room, but I did get satisfaction from knowing that I solved a problem, even if it is something simple like changing the color settings on a TV.

~ fin ~