Fixin' Stuff

Yesterday, if you hadn't heard, the Montgomery County traffic signal computer crashed. On the same day, the Metro (buses & subway system) communication computer crashed. I immediately thought it was sabotage, someone was up to something no good. Maybe I watch too much TV. Oh, speaking of which, have you been watching Flash Forward? It's on Thursdays at 8:00. And this morning Dan told me they have a character on 90210 with my maiden name. How cool is that? And this is a week after they had a character with my daughter's name. Neither computer problem affects me, but I hope they fix the computers soon. Well, maybe I don't, Mo. county folks are snooty enough, wouldn't dare live in PG county, well, HA, look who's laughing now.

Another thing fixed: I got the link in my sidebar working to my brother's new blog. He got the posting-by-email thing working too, so now he can take a picture with his blackberry and email it straight to his blog, which he did.

We had to delete another mouse this morning, I can't wait until we get their entry-way fixed, my handywoman is coming next week. Can't wait! I'm tired of these varmints helping themselves to shelter in my house. Yuck.

A Screw Loose

A week ago Thursday was my last ceramics class of the summer. I really love doing ceramics even though I'm not that good at it yet. There's just something about playing in clay that is satisfying on a visceral level. I want to take another class but I need to study the family schedule first to see if it'll fit in. I have a lot of unfinished pieces from the summer class I want to get done before I call it quits and move on to another hobby/activity.

So, last week at 10:00 pm my cell phone rings, my hands are dirty because I'm trying to finish cleaning up after myself in the studio. Fern is on the other end of the line, very distressed. Very. I'm trying to clean up, I'm trying to calm her down, I'm trying to hold the phone without rendering it unusable from the clay on my fingers. "Something bad has happened."

She is so distraught on the phone, wild thoughts are swirling and I can't help but think the worst: someone is dead, but because she's so distraught, it takes her, what seems like forever, to get the story out. No one is dead. No one is hurt. The computer is broken, she and Kevin were fighting over it.

Evidently, she moved the laptop to the other room so she could hook it up to the printer, but Kevin didn't think it belonged in the other room. He's very OCD like that. He'll get very upset when things are moved to places they don't belong, sometimes he'll be upset enough to become really agitated.

I've learned to bargain with Kevin, I'll explain thing needs to get moved here because reason and he can help me put it back when I'm done. That usually works, he sees an end to the discomfort of change and I've engaged him to help and staved off any aggression. Fern hasn't learned these tricks yet. Maybe this incident will help keep this trick in mind should she need it again.

So now we have a broken laptop. It turns out it's just a broken screen. Dan found a company that sells replacement screens and will even install it for you for $50. When we got our first Mac iBook, the memory upgrade was shipped separately and came with instructions for installation. I've seen the inside of laptops before, I was not afraid.

I took apart the laptop to get to the part number on the back of the broken screen, (I took out 12 minuscule screws to get there!) and ordered a replacement for $109 + shipping. It arrived yesterday and it didn't take me long to get the new one installed. It was quite easy and everything went back together nicely. Except, I had two screws left over. The laptop booted up so I'm not going to worry about it.





PS, I took pictures of the fix, but the camera battery died so you'll get them later.

Report on the New Washer

The new washer was delivered Saturday morning and the first load I ran was a load of towels. When the cycle was done, I was genuinely surprised with how "dry" the towels were when they came out. The front-load washers really do spin out a lot more water than top-load units.

The cycles on the front-load machines take a lot longer than in the top-loaders but for some reason the next several loads were taking 10 to 30 minutes longer than the initial time displayed on the front panel. These subsequent loads were also not as dry as the first one. I was confused and concerned. I had to use the 'drain and spin' feature to get the clothes dry enough to put in the dryer.

Finally, after several loads, I read the troubleshooting part of the manual and found out if the drain hose is pushed too far down the drain, it'll cause a vacuum and the washer will think it can't drain the water properly, thus not spinning fast enough. Sure enough, the installer guy installed the hose securely by pushing it down the drain much too far.

Fixed! I pulled it out a bit and every load after that has spun out sufficiently.