24 Hours 1705

Many people have no doubt seen the old TV series “24 Hours” where Keifer Sutherland saves the US from horrible threats in every 1 hour episode that covered a 24 hour period. I never paid much attention to the show, but I have had a horrible 24 hours that I want to tell you about.

Yesterday morning we went to the fitness center and stopped at Wal-Mart for some brew afterward. We walked by the electronics area on our way to the brew section. The electronics area had this big sign that said closeout on a 50 inch Hisense Smart TV. The sign listed the set at $148 and I began to salivate. I have wanted to get Joyce a new TV for the living room because the old 32 inch set we have gets a bit scratchy with the speakers at higher volume levels. I had been mulling over a 40 inch smart TV, thinking an extra 8 inches would please any woman, but when I saw the price on that Hisense I thought an extra 18 inches would be even better.

I am not usually an impulse buyer, but I was considering that TV on the way home. We unloaded our purchases and I was just cracking open my first beer of the day when a plate Joyce had hung on the kitchen wall (and not gotten it secured properly) fell off the wall and on its way down hit our metallic kitchen knife holder, sending knives flying all over the kitchen behind me. It was a scary moment! Oh, and the plate survived.

I enjoyed that first beer and a second (those flying knives rattled my nervous system) and we talked about that TV. Sometimes the best decisions are not made while drinking. Joyce was interested with that big screen and the low price. I made my snap decision, just 2 hours later, and we headed back to Wal-Mart. Well the price on the sign was reversed, instead of 148, it was actually 184. That was still cheap enough and well we were there, so I popped for it.

The next problem was trying to get that giant TV box into our small car. It took a few tries, but I figured out that by dropping the back seats and jamming the box in through the trunk it fit with just a little fine shaving off the skin of the box. We got the set home and I hauled it into the living room. The next problem was trying to figure out how to get it out of the tightly confined box. There was no indication on the box about how to get it safely out of the box. It took me an hour plus to get the TV out and get everything put together to mount it on our stand. The TV setup was simple enough, but checking it out after setup, there were 4 channels that did not have sound and some had a grainy picture. Those that did work were great. I could have lived with the problem, but the one channel was CNN and Joyce loves that and I cannot make her live without that. She said it would be okay, but I knew better than to buy into that story and I did not want her to do without one of her favorite channels. After hours of unpacking and trying every setting the TV had to correct the problem, I quit for the night.

I was up at 0630 the next morning trying a few other fixes I had thought about. Nothing worked. I tried my old reliable internet that knows how to fix everything (except our new TV) nothing helped. I called the company help line, or should I say no help line? They tried to blame it on my cable company until I interrupted the guy and said I have the faulty channels perfectly on my other TV. He then said he would have to refer the issue up the line. I asked how long that might be, he was vague on the answer. I had seen online that their customer service was not too great so I was getting pretty frustrated and sad at that point.

I spent a few more hours on the set and noticed the 4 channels that were not working correctly started expanding to 8, still not channels Joyce watches, except for CNN. We had picture on CNN, just no sound, so I thought I would just hook up my external speakers. No dice. The external speakers had no sound from the audio out jack; I tried my headphones, no sound, so the audio output was not functioning.

That put me over the edge! I decided to take the TV back to Wal-Mart, but before I could do that I had to disassemble the TV and reinsert the TV in the box in the correct way (there is only one way and I found that out the hard way) and reuse the packing materials. Well that took us another 2 hours to get it all correct. Off to Wal-Mart and the customer service desk. The poor woman there had to reverse all we had done 2 hours before to look at the TV. I felt so bad for her and had the person I had talked to in electronics told me I could have brought it back without putting it in the box everyone would have been better and had time saved.

The final hours of my disastrous 24 hours were spent on the back patio having some brewskies and making life all better again. I am no Keifer Sutherland, but I got the job done in 24 hours and can only wonder what will happen in my next 24 hour episode. I hope I have at least another week until the next episode may air and I may have to save the US all over again.