fri feb 5
I had pork stroganoff for lunch, and I gave the cat the bowl to lick when I was done.
And when he was done, I put the bowl on the counter and went about my day.
I needed a snack a couple hours later. A bowl of chips sounded good, but we were clean outta clean bowls. I looked at that stroganoff bowl on the counter and I said to myself, “Hmmmm.”
thu feb 11
The dryer broke. Who you gonna call?
Mary was berserk. She’s got a B&B to run! She can’t be without the dryer! Can I please take a look? Right now? Sigh. I got my tools and headed upstairs.
I pulled it out and vacuumed up the dust bunnies. I took it apart, removed the heating element, and found a break in it, all while Mary told me what a good friend that dryer had been; How she’d bought it used from John 10 years ago, who’d bought it used 10 years before that. Yada yada yada.
I ordered a new part online, packed up my tools, and returned to the basement. Total time: 90 minutes.
I don’t know why we don’t just buy a new dryer.
sat feb 13
We keep the bedroom colder than the rest of the house.
This is fine except for when you first get into bed, and it takes a few minutes to warm up the sheets.
In the olden days, they made bed warmers out of hot coals and steel cans, so I got to thinking maybe I could … No. I’m kidding! I wouldn’t do something like that. Don’t worry. I promise.
Umm. Where was I? …
So we use an electric mattress pad that heats up each side of the bed to juuuust the right shade of heat. These things are great. We’re on our third one, because the first two broke. And now, the brand new one we just bought — the highest rated mattress pad on the market! — broke.
As Mary says: “This is annoying.”
Any time anything breaks around here, I am the go-to guy, so, I said to myself, let’s do this scientifically: It’s not totally dead: It works fine until it doesn’t, and then it flashes an error code.
“Aha,” I said! “Some kind of electrical interference!”
I just happened to have some ferrite cores laying around, so I put them on all the wires and we settled in to take one data point per night.
Night 1: it worked. (better than expected)
Night 2: it worked. (lookin’ good so far!)
Night 3: didn’t work. (nice try)
Night 4: didn’t work. (sigh)
Yes, she’s got the receipt, but what a pain in the ass! So I took it apart and put it together and turned it around and swapped the controls (twice) , and it seemed to be fine, so we settled back in and took one data point per night.
Night 1: it worked.
Night 2: it worked.
Night 3: didn’t work.
Night 4: didn’t work.
It turned out I’d swapped the controls once too often, though, and when Mary turned off her side at night, she was really turning off mine. We discarded these data points, swapped the controls, and then settled in again for one data point per night.
Night 1: it worked.
Night 2: it worked.
Night 3: didn’t work.
Night 4: didn’t work.
Now I like a challenge, but I don’t need a challenge. To hell with it.
sun feb 14
I do a lot of programming, and I’m pretty good about backing up my stuff.
Every once in awhile, I ‘git clone’ all my code to a thumb drive, and then I give myself a little pat on the back. I’ve never needed my backup, but it’s good to know I’ve got it.
About six months ago, I started making big changes and -ahem- I failed to ‘git add’ the directories containing the new code. (Wouldn’t you think that would be automatic?) So every time I backed up, I was backing up the old code, and not the new code.
And I only know this now by the dumbest of luck.
“This is bad,” I thought to myself. “Very bad.”
So I fixed it.
Then I backed up my code to a thumb drive, breathed a sigh of relief, and gave myself a little pat on the back.
wed feb 17
The washer broke. Jesus Christ! What’s next? My motorcycle?
It stopped dead in mid-cycle. The door won’t open and, in a touch of poetic justice, it’s got a wet blanket inside it.
I got my toolbox, toked up, and trudged next door.
I googled the error code and went looking for the drain pump. I took off the back cover but, as they say, ‘you can’t get there from here.’ So I disconnected 1-2-3-4-5 six – count ’em – pipes and wires, got the floor all wet, pulled it out, laid it on its side, and took off the bottom cover. I pulled the pump, took it apart, and – yup, just as I suspected – it was full of crud.
I cleaned it out, tested it, put it back together, plugged it in, and … the pump was fine, so … Problem solved! Except that I still couldn’t get the door open. I decided I couldn’t fix it in-situ, so I got a dolly and I rolled that fucking washing machine uphill on the dirt road in a snow storm, down the drive, into the house, and then – clunk clunk clunk – down the stairs into the basement. I took a break and had a couple cookies.
I examined the door closely and decided I had to take the front of the washer off in order to get to the door latch. I cut away the dead solenoid with a dremel tool and …
Ta da!
The door opened!
So now I’ve got $78 in parts on order, and the wreckage of a washing machine strewn about my basement. I got to thinking that, if I’ve “got to destroy it to save it,” then I’ve got the ‘destroy’ part down cold.
fri feb 26
The WiFi broke next door.
Didn’t see that one coming, huh?
We had a power failure overnight. Mild enough at our house that my clock and the microwave noticed it, but not the oven or the refrigerator. But next door, it fried the DSL router, and the guests couldn’t get online or watch TV. So I waited till they left for the day, and took a look.
Dead. Definitely. I swapped out their router for ours, so now WE have no WiFi. And, since I have unlimited data, Mary’s borrowed MY phone for a WiFi hot spot so she can watch Netflix. And I’m shit outta luck.
Good thing you don’t need WiFi to play ping pong. Yet.
sat feb 28
And Marshall died.