As those who have been reading my blog would know, I have a Nintendo Wii in my possession ever since launch day last year. I have enjoyed Wii Sports, Wario Ware, Raving Rabbids, and other games for the Wii, Gamecube (which the Wii is backward compatible with), and other Virtual Console systems.
Naked Wii Sports with a partner of the opposite sex can never been beaten in term of sheer pleasure. I sure wish I have a girlfriend now. 
Lately, I have started to notice an issue with the Wii — instead of the nice fogging effects, I would get an unusual grid of mostly green dots, with red and blue colors randomly used instead of the green color.
For those with a technical mind, what happened is that the Wii’s alpha channel got busted on the graphic cards, and hence required repair.
For the rest of you, let me try to explain. A TV have three colors, Red, Green, and Blue, all mixed together in a neat trick to fool your eyes in seeing multiple colors of all kinds. We also use the term ‘channels’ for those colors — in a sense where one channel contains all the data for red, another have all the data for green, and the last have all of the data for blue. An example is seen to the left — you have the bottom 3 pictures (channels) all combined together to make the full picture on top.
A modern game system also have one more channel where we call the “alpha” channel. This is basically information-based, and usually used for transparent effects, such as moving fogs, and so on forth. Having an extra channel available allows for the game system to basically build the world, then quickly tweak it to fit the right mood. This is far easier and more efficient for the game system than directly manipulating the world itself.
Unfortunately, somewhere in the graphic cards, the ability to communicate to the alpha channel got borked. So instead of a creepy fog, we got weird dots.
I sent the Wii in for repair, and Nintendo, well known for their great customer service, got it back to me within a couple weeks (which is fantastic considering how often I go on the road.) I am glad to say that the problem got fixed and I have the great foggy effects I wanted.
But then the system shut down. Hard. I had to unplug the Wii and plug it back in in order to get it to boot up again. Everything seems fine, but then it shut down after a while again. I touched the Wii and noticed how hot it was on the top panel. That’s when I realized that what I observed when I pulled out the Wii from the package was all wrong.
You see, as I pulled it out, I looked into the vent and remarked to myself, “Hey, there’s now a heat sink, they must have added it.” Unfortunately, I realized later that I was technically not supposed to see this heat sink, as it was already there all this time. Take a look at this image. To the left, you would see the huge aluminum heat sink, which does a fantastic job in absorbing heat away from the chip that generate it. Now, if you would look at the image linked here, One of the problem of the heat sink, is that it can only do so much in still air. Like sitting in a hot office, it’s stiffling. However, just like the office, if you add a fan carefully positioned toward the outside (or elsewhere), things get a lot cooler very quickly, as the moving air absorb the heat and get ejected out by the fan.
The second image have that said fan in place. What I was seeing was an equivalent to the first image, only through the vent holes where the fan was supposed to be. That’s right, the repair company forgot to put the fan back in.
Just like my experience at the auto shop years ago when a repair guy forget to replug in my ABS sensors after rotating my tires and having an inspection, we have a very simple step overlooked step that is forcing me to send the Wii back in for repair. It is not something that I could do without breaking the warranty. It is utterly frustrating that a rush job was done, without carefully checking, and double-checking the results with a list in hand.
This is why I do not complain when we are delayed while waiting to take off. If there is a broken part, it usually is found thanks to a very specific and careful inspection based on a list agreed upon by FAA and our airlines. As much as I would like to whine about the silly communication system below, I understood that if they let it fly, then they are advocating an attitude that something broken could be determined to be safe for us to fly with. Where does the line get drawn in the sand? Who draw this line? Best to say “No, fix it or get it signed off”. That’s why the broken overhead bins get fixed NOW, not later. That’s why bad seats get replaced NOW, not later. That’s why a bad communication system get fixed NOW, not later.
Did Nintendo create a checklist? Did the repair company have this checklist? Did they follow the checklist? Does the checklist include a requirement for a second pair of eyes to double-check? Are those two pairs of eyes’ roles changed frequently? (Yes, pilots and co-pilots switch over almost every flights in many roles. The pilot would take off, co-pilot would land, and vice-versa, while the other person make sure everything is okay using their checklist.)
Those are good questions to ask, even though it’s just a $250 console. Those are also great questions to ask yourself in your job — do you have a checklist for important matters involving your customers? Do you follow it?
