Catching up with blogging & home repairs

My wife continually asks me 2 questions:

1. Did you read my blog????
2. When are you going to blog???

As a computer consultant, it's hard to find things to blog about that wouldn't reflect on my customers or repeat what's already being said by industry pundits. How many stories about bizarre IT occurrences with unnamed people can this world take?? Hopefully the few times I do blog make them gems instead of just more blogosphere noise.

So now that Thanksgiving is near, I have a moment to pause and reflect. When not at work, I've been fixing things around the house. The door that leads into the garage has been making a hole in the wall so I got that fixed. I found a "fancy" doorstop with a magnet to hold the door open and patched the wall with one of those stainless-steel pro patches. Best drywall work I've done yet. After doing the drywall around a window we had put in, I swore I'd always call a pro. It got done, but I always wonder what it looks like now (can't be good).

The Oven Story
My wife called me a couple weeks ago to complain the broiler stopped working. No biggie. We don't use it too much anyway, so I drug my feet to get a new element. Good thing I did.

A couple days ago, while baking, I smelled burning food. Yum, there goes dinner. The broiler element was on and the baking element was not. Every time I tried to bake - there was the broiler. So I told Priscila the control/computer/brain/whatever was fried and to call a repair guy. $40 later he said, "The computer is fried. It'll be another $300 to fix it." Thanks buddy. A new one is around $450.

After spending an evening shopping for new and slightly used on Craig's List, we were on the verge of spending a bunch more for a REALLY NICE, FULLY LOADED, HIGH END oven/range. I love to cook, but I don't bake fancy cakes (except for this one) so I can't really justify a high-end model. We put cold or uncooked food in our regular one, and it comes out hot and cooked. It does what we need it to do.

I asked Priscila to make one last call in the morning to find out how much the part cost and we'd try to install it. The local appliance store had the part for around $150. Before I got home Priscila had it replace. The cables pop right off and the whole display/computer pops off the back. Easy fix. Thanks Baby. Now I got cool spare parts for my microcontroller projects. Yipee!!!!

The Leaky Fridge or How to Save $1200
We'd had a bunch of ice collecting at the bottom of the freezer. Priscila would chip it out, but it kept coming back. This fridge was a Craig's List purchase, and we both feel the seller wasn't on the level. Priscila started shopping for fridges.

I found a little tray where the defrost water would collect and run into a drain tube. It was full and overflowing. I grabbed a $2 piece of wire and gently snaked it down the drain tube. A little wiggling and ---- SSSSSLLLUURRRPPPP ---- the water is gone and it's all working again. That $2 wire saved me $1200. Figure in financing charges and it's kinda like winning the lottery. :)