loose thread i. never
wove into the pattern. am
dangling, frayed, tensile.

Sears, succumbing to my crushing media blitz, has provided a full refund for the botched service call. Hooray justice, hooray, internet, hooray America!

So as a side not to my last post, I figured I should share the repair information for folks with this problem.

First off, I take no responsibility for your death, dismemberment or other calamity should you attempt such a repair. I’m assuming you are competent to handle such a project, and if you’re not, it’s your fault. Attempt this repair at your own risk.

Secondly, make sure we’re dealing with the same problem. In our case, the display flahed “F11″ after a few minutes of attempting a wash cycle. When we sat around and observed the cycle, we heard that the door latch would seem to engage correctly, or fail to do so at random intervals. If that sounds like the same problem, you might be looking in the right place.

Thirdly, I’m lazy, so unless someone actually has need of the info, I’m not going to go back and redo the whole operation. Don’t hesitate to let me know if you need the pictures and stuff though, as I’ve wanted to put together an Instructible for a long time, and this would make a decent one. The quick version is that you need to carefully work your way into the machine until you can safely remove the entire lock assembly. Very carefully open up the assembly, and you’ll find the contact points to be cleaned. Just a few seconds with some sandpaper, (or maybe even a pencil eraser) should do the trick. Then put it all back together. Special tip: you should not have any parts left over.

Like I said, shoot me an email if you need more detailed info. I’ll be happy to post pics and stuff.

Recently, our much beloved Kenmore front load washing machine seemed to have died. I’m not kidding about the “much beloved” part. Best washing machine either of us has ever used. Sadly, it seems it’s mission was to seduce us, and then commit suicide, forcing us to pony up for another high-end machine. When we called Sears Home Services to fix it, here’s what happened:

On December 9th, my wife received a service call from technician number 0000497. I was working and wasn’t available at the time to examine our malfunctioning Kenmore front load washing machine, and we agreed that the quoted $129 fee was a reasonable price to pay to have the unit examined and possibly fixed. We understood that this was a minimum fee and would not guarantee a repair.

When I got home that night, I was presented with a $129 bill and a repair quote of $692.74; a price seemingly designed to force us into buying a new unit. The “Parts Required” list on my quote reads:

1 SUB CNTRL-EL             $292.01
1 SUB CNTRL-EL             $228.77
Parts Sub-Total                 $520.78
Net Parts                             $520.78
Tax on Parts                       $ 42.96
Total Parts                          $563.74
Estimated Grand Total    $692.74

Since I had nothing to lose, I went ahead and performed the repair myself. 40 minutes and one square inch of sandpaper later, I had a functioning washing machine that has already lasted a month and a half and completed dozens of wash cycles. At this time I am confident that my repair was successful. Note that the trained repair person quoted over five hundred dollars in what he described to my wife as (to my recollection) “control boards”, complicated electronic assemblies which had absolutely nothing to do with the actual problem. The correct repair involved removing and disassembling the mechanical locking mechanism for the door, removing a bit of carbon buildup on a set of electrical point contacts, and reassembling the machine. That’s it. No parts needed whatsoever.

My first complaint is that the repairman who visited us was either tragically ill-trained, or his job was simply to bully us unto replacing a unit that required nothing more than simple maintenance which easily could have been completed in the time he spent “diagnosing” the machine. I wouldn’t have objected had his quote included the correct parts assembly, but he wasn’t even in the ballpark. I did spend a few minutes examining those boards, and there was no reason to be confident they were the point of failure. There was no reason not to investigate the mechanical mechanism.

My second complaint regards the physical construction of the locking mechanism. Such a mechanism should be mechanically dead simple, and require at most one moving part. The assembly as implemented had at least a half a dozen moving parts, arranged in an extremely overcomplicated fashion, the only rational explanation for which is to provide a point of failure on an otherwise beautifully designed machine.

Finally, the technician had not properly remounted the control board casing to the frame of the machine. In his defense, the retaining clips were not sufficient to the task, and some had already broken, either during or before his work. If I hadn’t remounted the casing, I’m certain the movement of the machine would have caused further damage.

Finally, I would like to add that my wife and I both love our Kenmore front load washer model number 11045862400. (Seriously, it needed that many digits?) It has been the best washing machine either of us has ever used, and we are glad to have it back in service. We’re expecting our first baby in April, and there’s no way we would have been able to afford a machine of this cost any time in the near future. I substituted the word cost for the word quality, because I truly believe that this machine was designed to provide a great user experience, and then to fail.

I am requesting a full refund of the $129.00 that we paid on Service Order Number 82838365 from Sears #: 0008078 on December 9, 2009.

Regards,

Joseph T. Manning

PS: This message will be submitted to consumerist.com, along with whatever resolution comes of it. -JTM

Sorry about the mess. For some reason Wordpress won’t let me make line breaks. I’ll fix that when I can. The administration has been in office now for just over sixty days, making this the perfect time to share my memories o the event.\nThe trip in to DC was great. Many thanks to Joe and Kelly, and especially Kayla for hosting us. They were gracious enough to put us up for the duration of our stay.Thanks also to Enterprise Rent-A-Car for excellent service, and a nice upgrade. We reserved a pickup truck, as it was the cheapest option. Apparently someone else needed it, so Enterprise upgraded us to a Pontiac G6, which was a pretty sweet ride.We had a great time leading up to the trip, with the exception that my ebook reader conked out, (Still no resolution on that, stay tuned for the possibility of an invective-laced rant if the manufacturer doesn’t rectify the situation soon.), and that Carin spent about a day feeling pretty crappy.We got to hang out with friends, and friends of friends, had great food both out and about and cooked “ourselves”. The quotes are because all I did was chop up some olives. Both Joe and Carin are great cooks, and one night we had a spaghetti feed with homemade sauce and homemade bread. Soooo yummy.The morning of the inauguration was indescribably cold, in addition to which, I completely overestimated my cold tolerance. It had been pretty nice most of the time we were there, and I didn’t wear nearly enough layers. We got up and got to the metro some time around four in the morning, so we were stepping into a whole new level of cold.We were out and about in the frozen, darkness for a good two to three hours before things started to light up and look like daytime.I mixed up our metro stations pretty badly, assuming Federal Triangle and Federal Center must refer to the same stop, simply because I could only find one on our little metro map. So admittedly a fair bit of our extra walking was my fault. However, that doesn’t excuse the fact that the inauguration itself was a complete and total snafu. Not one single uniformed person could so much as point us even vaguely in the direction we needed to go. Keep in mind, there were only three or four points of entry for ticket holders. Such a lack of communication was inexcusable.The pandemonium expressed itself in many ways. The metro closings were not as announced, the cops seemed to be completely without instruction mostly wandering at random, security was a joke, and crowd control was nonexistent. You may have seen the story of the “tunnel of death”. I assure you, attendee reports of the complete failure of inaugural logistics were not exaggerated. There may have been vast numbers of plain clothes law enforcement, but whatever they may have done was completely overshadowed by the utter uselessness, and often the counterproductivity of the uniformed cops and military personnel.It was apparent by the time we got to our assigned area that security was an illusion.It was assumed that security would be airtight, so apparently nobody got any big ideas.In hindsight, if I’d known what I was walking into, I could have snuck an M-72 Light Anti-tank Weapon in to the inauguration of an American President. (I had to google the correct name of that weapon. A kid I knew growing up had an empty tube from one, and that’s been the image in my head since inauguration day.) We were told to bring no bags, no tripods, nothing extra. As it turns out, camera bags, purses, tripods, collapsible chairs, blankets, and all manner of bric-a-brac were allowed in. When we got to the security checkpoint, there were no metal detectors. I was asked to open my coat, and I was half-assedly frisked. They patted down my sides, but not my front or back. If I had been dressed in an appropriate coat, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I could have snuck an M-72, or even two, into the inauguration.After being herded like cattle through the security illusion, we were cordoned off by plastic hurricane fencing and expected to wait quietly for several hours. Carin and I had just picked out a likely spot of ground and sat down to wait out the cold when the crowd announced its opinion of the waiting game by stampeding through the hurricane fencing and pushing their way forward by roughly five hundred feet.After catching up with the crowd, and finding them to be about as comfortable as sardines, Carin and I decided to push our luck and see how close we could get.The little x marks about where the  ”fence” was supposed to hold back the crowd. The straight line was just so I could measure my overall progress. Turns out I got right around 850 ft. closer to the incoming President, by being allowed to flagrantly ignore the rules. Our route along the little reflecting pool took us across three different fences, and the only admonishment we received was to get down off the wall of the pool itself, lest we fall through the ice. It was pretty awesome for us, but I can’t overstate the complete lack of security.The final act of I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening was when the cops blocking the section of Capitol Circle in front of us, opened up the area they’d kept clear and let what appeared to be completely random people in. I saw at least three kids jump the fence into the Capitol Grounds. Could have been anybody. And they didn’t get kicked out so far as I could see.All that said, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a place with such an overpowering sense of goodwill. Grouchy bastard that I am, even I couldn’t get upset or annoyed with the millions of people that showed up to witness that morning.I can’t recall my feet ever hurting as bad as they did that day, and after the swearing in and about half of the President’s speech, I sat down on a frozen stone bench closed my eyes and listened. And damned if he didn’t infect me with hope. I know most of my feelings were of relief at the end of the last administration, and that relief brought me to tears. President Obama’s speech finished the job. Even now, even though I think his administration is making a lot of bad choices, I’m hopeful that we can get our country back on track. And I’m trying to figure out what I can do to contribute.On the way out of the inauguration, we could not find transportation to save our lives. Nearly every single barricade remained in place, forcing the crowd to funnel out the same ways we funneled in. Metro stations that were supposed to open up to get people out of downtown stayed closed, and those that were open had tens of thousands of people trying to choke through every entrance. We ended up walking what strangely enough looks like 1.00 miles as the crow flies from where I stood to where Google Earth puts the icon for the Navy Yard Metro station. Best I can figure it it was about 3.3 miles through the lost and wandering route we stumbled through. Makes me feel like kind of a puss to remember it so harshly, but it was so cold my sweat felt like ice water under my jacket, and so windy I couldn’t take the jacket off. Top that off with the fact that I weight 350 pounds and had been on my feet largely on frozen concrete and asphalt for something like seven hours. Perhaps worse was the repeated defeat of finding every entrance to every metro station completely blocked by a mass of people so tight you’d think we evolved directly from coral.Despite all of that I’m glad we went. It was the biggest event I’ve ever witnessed, and one way or the other, it will turn out to have been a pivotal moment in American history.On a side note, I’d like to hand out a world class FUCK YOU to United Airlines for the worst day of air travel I’ve ever had, and the completely callous, dismissive, and downright rude treatment we received throughout our trip home.The plane leaving Dulles had problems with its “air start” which forced the smell of burnt plastic into the plane requiring an evacuation. After about an hour, they claimed to have cycled the air in the plane and that it was ready for us to return. They lied. The smell of burnt plastic ass was still there. We, the cattle passengers were expected to filter the cabin air through our lungs.The plane from Chicago had problems with the luggage loading machinery. I’m not sure if it was internal or external to the plane, but either way, they never did get it repaired. They just kept us on the plane for three and a half hours while they fiddled with it, announcing about every 18 minutes that it should just be another 20 minutes. This whole time, the alternate power supply hadn’t been in operation, so they couldn’t run the air conditioning. I think I now know what the inside of a speculum feels like. It was only at the end of our ordeal that we discovered they’d kept the jetway attached to the plane the whole time. They could have let us out any time within that three and a half hours, but they chose not to. How did we find out about this? Because the brakes on the jetway froze, preventing them from disconnecting it. Another forty minutes wasted.After that, you’d think they’d have set us up with some sort of courtesy in Los Angeles, since we’d utterly missed our connecting flight. No such luck. No meal voucher, no apology, not even basic courtesy. Not only did we miss the next flight too, but they dragged us out to the plane home, let us look at it longingly for a few minutes, and then sent us back into the airport, telling us we were too fat. Being that we were the delayed passengers the ubiquitous United announcement that “We’d like to offer a free round-trip ticket anywhere in the contiguous United States to anyone willing to give up their seats.” was actually on our behalf. So get this. They tell us we’re too fat to get on the 2nd to last plane, still won’t give us any kind of consideration, but when we turn in our worthless “you have a ticket, but you don’t have a seat” tickets for real tickets on a later flight, (which was already our only option), they give us free tickets to somewhere else.I hope other folks can manage to swing this “deal” so here’s how it goes.This was a puddle jumper connection from LA to San Luis Obispo.1. We missed flight A.2. We get “tickets” on flight B which aren’t actually linked to seats on the plane.3. Nobody else was about to give up a seat for us, so we gave up our fake tickets.4. They give us our consolation tickets, then haul us out to plane B anyway but don’t let us on the plane.5. We get on flight C miserable and angry, and toting two free tickets on what should be called “Go Fuck Yourself Air”.I’m still glad we went, and I’ll post more pictures eventually. This thing is way too long anyway, and may be split into separate entries at some point.

Yup. It was a typo. We got an email back this morning clearing things up. We’re on our way. Pictures and video will be posted when available. Woohoo!

So on or around election day, Carin had the idea of both of us trying to get tickets to the 56th (remember that number, it’s important later) Presidential Inauguration Swearing In Ceremony. I figured the odds were astronomical, but it was worth a shot. So between us, we sent a total of six emails to our Senators and our respective Representatives. Then we pretty much forgot about it.

Then today, I get a message saying she got an email saying that she’d won two tickets in the California 22nd district lottery. The email reads as follows.

We are pleased to let you know that after conducting a lottery, your name was selected to receive inaugural tickets for the 53rd Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2009.

In order to accommodate as many ticket requests for this historic inauguration, a lottery was conducted of ticket requesters. While your name was selected,:

· If you requested 1 ticket, 1 ticket has been reserved for you.

· If you requested more than 1 ticket, 2 tickets have been reserved for you.

The number of tickets that have been reserved for you and your party is: 2

Based on procedures issued by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, we will be given all of the inaugural tickets allotted to the 22nd Congressional District the week prior to the Inauguration. And in order to ensure that ticket recipients are constituents of the 22nd Congressional District, tickets must be picked up by yourself from my Washington D.C. office on Friday January 16. We will send more information regarding ticket distribution.

Please respond to this email, no later than Friday, December 12, indicating that you are still planning on attending the inauguration and would still like tickets so you and your party can attend. If you are no longer attending the inauguration, we would appreciate knowing so that the tickets can be returned to the lottery system so another neighbor of ours might be able to attend.

Thank you for your patience.

Notice anything fishy? That’s right, the email mentions the 53rd inauguration. We’re both really, really hoping this is just a typo, and not some really scummy scam or prank or hoax. This is history, and we’d both be honored to witness it. The email address certainly looks legit from the forward, but I haven’t been able to look at the full headers yet, so that’s no help. We’ve both called all over the place to try and find somebody who might be able to get ahold of someone in Representative Kevin McCarthy’s office to confirm the status of the email. Nobody’s picking up the phone on a Sunday. Grrrrrrrr . . . Luckily we’ve got our plane tickets price saved until tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll be able to clear this up in time to not get ripped off any further on plane fare. The next hurdle will be accommodations, but for that I have a cunning plan . . .

So, if you’re reading this, please send us good mojo. I promise to share the most awesome possible pictures from whatever vantage we get.

I admit it. I’m so sentimental it makes even me think I’m a tool. That said, I’m moving the hell on. I’ve put the bitch in the box. I’ve rounded up every photo, email, and reference of any kind having to do with my nutjob ex, and put it into an encrypted disk image. I haven’t deleted the disk image yet, but I’m pretty sure that’s going to happen soon.After a dozen breakup attempts, two real breakups, one weird attempt at a friendship and one “I can’t talk to you because I’m trying to build a relationship with the guy I dated immediately after you, and you always cast a shadow over that relationship the first time.” I’m done. Finished. I’m done trying to hold on to good memories. I’m done trying not to think of her as a vicious, life-sucking, insane bitch. I’m done hoping we can someday have some sort of a functional adult friendship. Fuck that crazy bitch. She’s in the box.

And pretty soon I’m going to throw the box into the dark abyss where even memory dies.

You know what I’m talking about. You’ve had the musical itch. It’s when you need to hear a certain song, or a certain artist, and you know the world will magically become a better place. It’ll scrub away the funk, or pick you up out of the doldrums, or maybe light you up for the next week or two. It’s when you’ve combed your music collection backwards and forwards and nothing does the trick, and you finally have to admit that you have no idea just what you need to listen to. It sucks.

So with that in mind, I’d like to thank Trevor Hall. (I’ll post some Amazon links if I can get that working soon.) Trevor Hall is a Blond guy who sings and plays guitar and is visually indistinguishable from any number of useless blond L.A. twerps. (Apparently “Trevor Hall” includes both Trevor Hall, and a kick-ass percussionist named Chris Steele.) Musically, however, “Trevor Hall” would be easy to pick out of the top 40 crowd. They’d be the two guys who can make music that is musical, soulful, and entertaining, from a guitar, a bongo drum, and what looked like a big plywood box. Chris Steele has great big hair, and a great big smile, and seemed like a really nice guy in the 10 seconds it took him to tell me they weren’t set up to take cards.

So Carin invited me to a Johnny Lang concert a few weeks ago. I’m getting my revenge on October 5th when I’m taking her to see Great Big Sea, one of my all time favorite bands. So I’d heard a few minutes worth of Johnny Lang while hanging out at Carin’s house, and I dug him. And he put on a really good show. But it was Trevor Hall, and even a little more so, Chris Steel, who finally allowed me to scratch my musical itch. The songs that we got to hear are all very rhythm-centric, and that was showcased better in the live show than in the recordings I’ve heard so far. The recordings are still very good, however, and they still scratch that itch. In addition to the lively and surprising rhythms, the lyrics to several of the songs are wonderful. Some of the best songs can sound, for a stretch, like they were written as just an exercise in tricky rhymes, and while you’re listening for the clever verbal backflips, you’ll come across a powerful and resonant emotion, holding up the songs like bedrock. They go by Trevor Hall. Give them a listen.

Granted, I tend to wax ridiculously enthusiastic about new music. So what? It’s still good music. And yes, I’ll admit, there are a couple of TH songs that come across as generic pop, but they’re the exception rather than the rule. And yes, Trevor Hall is at risk of the same horrible fate that happened to Cake in whatever forgettable album came after Fashion Nugget. Yes I know it was Prolonging the Magic: I was making a point. I didn’t realize, however, Prolonging the Magic was released as long ago as 2001 and had been followed by 3 other albums. See? That’s exactly my point.

Note to Trevor Hall: The only thing you need from a studio producer is a faithful reproduction of your live performance. They need to make sure your vocals don’t get overpowered by the instruments and that all of the elements can be heard clearly. If any producer gives you advice on your sound that doesn’t directly address those two things, fire them immediately. You let somebody gloss up your sound, and your music loses its ability to scratch the itch. I’m not fucking around here. Your recordings already lack much of the warmth and fun of the live show, and as far as I can tell, that’s mostly due to playing down the percussion. That said, I wish you much luck, and many shiny metallic albums. ; ]

Private Sunshine says that’s one of the sublime moments of truth. Captain Bringdown, however, points out the fact, that it’s not true for everybody. There are plenty of things that can flat out kill the funny. I guess it’s how we hope things will turn out. We know there will be sadness, and pain, and all of that. We just try to manage the chaos so that when we turn around and look back, we feel the tickle of the funny, and not the stabbing of the pain.

Note: I’m tired of saying “one part of me” and “the other part”. From now on, we have Private Sunshine, and Captain Bringdown. And other assorted characters as necessary.