Appliance Repair Wisdom for the Ages

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Timing is everything and we timed this one right. After struggling up the Falling Waters Trail to the summit of Little Haystack on the Franconia Ridge, our eyeballs were treated to a feast of dramatic mountain vistas, White Mountain style. Here, see for yourself.

Sam on Little Haystack Mountain

After summitting Little Haystack, we headed north on the ridge to the summit of Mt. Lincoln.

Stephen is Blown Away by the Views!

We Bad!

Looking into the Pemigewassett Wilderness from the Franconia Ridge

Our original plan was to the hike the "T" (Little Haystack, north to Mt. Lincoln, doubleback to Little Haystack, then continue south to Mt. Liberty, doubleback to Little Haystack and head back down.) But we spent so much time lollygagging and feasting on eye-candy that we ran out of time and headed back down after Mt. Lincoln. We got back to the van just as the sun was setting. Sunset comes early up here in pre-winter Yankeeland, even earlier in the mountains.

Misty View toward Cannon Mountain

Take a hike!

These washers have been out for a few years and I'm starting to see more of them in the field. They are extremely reliable machines. Although they're designed for residential use, I've seen them used in commercial applications, sustaining daily, continuous use for several years. This is a top loading machine, vertical axis, and uses an agitator like most top-loaders. These pictures are all from a model GWL08, which has been out for several years. The current model is GWL11.

The most common problem I've seen with these washers is a failed pump. The pump is a separate electric pump, is very easy to change by laying the washer down on it's front panel, and is reasonably priced (about $50). Changing the pump is about a 10-minute job, and that includes time to manually bail a tub full of water.

Although it's a top-loader and looks very similar to any other top-loading washing machine you've seen, it has some significant design differences.

This machine uses a DC drive motor and performs spin and agitate by directly controlling the motor--no transmission! This has three big advantages over conventional top-loaders: 1) increased energy efficiency since you don't have efficiency losses through a transmission, 2) better reliability since there's no transmission to fail, and 3) no belts to fail since the agitator is connected directly to the motor shaft.

The control panel lifts off by removing two phillips screws on the back of the control panel. The panel then flips over. The picture below shows what it looks like with the control panel removed.

Control Compartment with Touchpad Lifted Off and Power/Pressure Module Removed (note the water inlet valves on the left-hand side)

Not shown above are Power Control and Pressure Sensing Module, which plugs into the water inlet valve nipple, and the tech sheet, which you'll find folded up to the left of the water inlet valve. The tech sheet gives detailed instructions for entering diagnostic mode and interpreting the binary diagnostic code generated by the LED display on the control panel touch pad.

The Power Control and Pressure Sensing Module has been removed in the picture above. It's shown below:

Power Control and Pressure Sensing Module

Another difference with this machine is that it has no discreet pressure switch. Tub fill level is sensed by the Power Control and Pressure Sensing Module, above. This module has two fuses inside, on the control board. When one of them blows, it's usually an indication that one of the high voltage components, pump or diverter valve, have gone bad. Surprisingly, and contrary to our experience with the abysmal Maytag Neptune Machine Control Board, this control board is amazingly robust. The board on this particular washer happened to be bad but that's the first one I've seen.

The air tube from the tub pressure dome connects to a nipple on the upper right-hand side of the module. The module has a female port that connects with the water inlet valve nipple making a water-tight connection. Water is run into a heat sink tube inside the control board module to keep it cool. It's the only water-cooled control board I've ever seen in the appliance world!

This last picture shows the Touchpad Module that accepts and interprets keypad input.

Touch Pad Module--Located on the Backside of the Touchpad

I haven't seen any failures of this module. I have however, seen the touchpad itself fail but, in almost every case, it's from the user pushing too hard on the keypad buttons. But, it's a very inexpensive and easy part to replace.

Nice machine, as you'd expect from Fisher & Paykel--reliable, first-rate engineering, and easy to troubleshoot and repair.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Topics: upcoming election, dumbasses stay home, democracy as the tyranny of the majority, individual liberty. Length: 5 minutes.

Your hosts: Samurai Appliance Repair Man and Mrs. Samurai.

Download the MP3 file of this show here (right-click and select save to download the file).

Not exactly a conservative? Not precisely a liberal? Not quite sure at all? What do those labels mean, anyway? Most people have the nagging feeling that this left-right, liberal-conservative pap that Big Media smears us with every day is far too narrow a view. The fact is that these labels are not only meaningless, but they exclude millions of people.

Relax--the Samurai has just what you need to figure it all out: The World's Smallest Political Quiz. Quick, easy, painless and, most of all, revealing--you just might learn something about yourself!

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Good comment--consider it added.

Remember, also, that on Maytag dryers, the smooth side of the belt goes against the drum.

I don't understand all these bleeting appeals to get out and vote. Could someone please answer this question for me: if people are ignorant about the pressing issues of the day, the principles of individual liberty upon which this nation was founded, or the basic structure and function of our government, then why in the hell do we want these boobs casting votes that affect all of us?

Oh wait, I can hear the whining and caterwauling now, "Hey, Samurai, you're too cynical about people!" Ok, how 'bout some numbers? Warning: the following contains factual information, including statistics, and a TV-talking head is NOT supplied to inject this information directly into that void between your ears. You have to actually read it...just like you would a ballot.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS, UNBELIEVABLE NEWS
by James W. Harris

New Study: Shocking Voter Ignorance

A new study by the libertarian Cato Institute indicates that a shockingly large number of U.S. voters are almost totally ignorant about the issues and candidates they vote on.

"Overall, close to one-third of Americans can be categorized as 'know-nothings' almost completely ignorant of relevant political information," writes Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, in "When Ignorance Isn't Bliss: How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy."

"Most of the time," Somin notes," only bare majorities know which party has control of the Senate, some 70 percent cannot name either of their state's senators and the vast majority cannot name any congressional candidate in their district at the height of a campaign."

Overall, voters tend to be "abysmally ignorant of even very basic political information... the sheer depth of most individual voters' ignorance is shocking to observers not familiar with the research."

A few examples from many in the report:

• The Patriot Act? What's that? Three-fourths of Americans say they know little or nothing about it. 58 percent say they've heard "nothing" or "not much" about it.
• Seventy percent don't know about the $500 billion new drug benefit added this year to Medicare, which Somin describes as "probably the most significant domestic legislation passed during the Bush administration."
• A majority cannot make even a rough estimate of how many Americans soldiers have been killed in Iraq.
• 61 percent believe that there has been a net loss of U.S. jobs in 2004.
• Over 60 per cent don't know that, during President Bush's term, there has been an explosion in domestic spending (about 25 percent above previous levels) that has enormously increased the national debt.
• Last year, 58 percent of Americans could not name a single federal Cabinet department.

And such voter ignorance is, alas, nothing new:

• In 1964, at the height of Cold War tensions, only 38 percent of the public knew that the Soviet Union was not a member of NATO.
• In 1994, after Republicans took control of Congress under the highly-publicized leadership of Rep. Newt Gingrich, 57 percent of Americans said they'd never heard of Gingrich, despite the avalanche of press coverage.
• In 1996, 67 percent couldn't name thei
r congressman, and only 26 percent knew that senators serve six-year terms.
• In the 2002 elections, only 3
2 percent of voters knew that the Republican Party controlled the House.

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

Looking at the grave threats to liberty now facing America, one can only conclude Jefferson was right.

(Source: Cato Institute study: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-525es.html)

Due to time constraints, I've been unable to return calls on the Toll-Free Appliance Repair Hotline for the past several days. Consequently, so many messages had piled up that there was no way I was going to be able to return them. So I had to delete them and start fresh. Hey, whaddya want for nothin'? R-r-r-r-r-rubbah biscuits?

Anyway, I'm back and available to take hotline calls. If you called the Hotline in the past several days and still need help with your appliance problem, go ahead and call the Toll-Free Appliance Repair Hotline again. Of course, first-time callers are also welcome to call.

Talk to you later.

Monday, October 25, 2004

I had the opportunity to work on a Fisher & Paykel DD602 dishdrawer a couple days ago. By the way, I'm a big fan of Fisher & Paykel equipment--if you ever have the opportunity to work on one, you'll see why. The engineering is elegant in its simplicity. Well-engineered equipment is actually much easier to work on because they've designed serviceability into the product.

Anyway, the problem with this particular dishdrawer was that the top drawer (with an 11 minute wash) was giving an F1 error code after the initial rinse, about five minutes into the cycle. The F1 code indicates an overfill condition. One of the most common causes for an overfill fault is that the dishwasher cannot pump out the dirty water due to a plugged drain hose.

So, I put the dishdrawer into diagnostic mode and tested the fill and pumpout functions--everything was peachy. I ran the top drawer in a normal wash cycle and, sho 'nuff, the drawer faulted out on F1 after the first rinse. Well, Houston, we had a problem and it was time for the Samurai to break open a can of whup-ass on this dishdrawer. First thing I did was pull the front panel off the drawer, like ahso:

Fisher Paykel DD602 dishdrawer with the front panel removed.

With that front panel off, I pulled the wire harness connectors off the main control board (lower right-hand side) to inspect for gookus. None found--my quest continued.

The next step to remove the botton drawer from the unit so I could inspect the flood switch. In order to do this, I had to remove the wire harness cover on the underside of the drawer. This is what the underside of the dishdrawer looks like with the botton cover panel removed:

Fisher Paykel DD602 dishdrawer, looking at the underside of one of the drawers with the wire cover plate removed.

With the bottom cover off, I could unclip the wire harness, fill hose, and drain hose. Then I unclipped the linkage at the back of the drawer and lifted the drawer off the slider arms. All this to expose the flood switch, shown on the left-hand side of the bottom panel in the picture below:.

Fisher Paykel DD602 dishdrawer with the lower drawer removed. The flood switch in mounted on the base, left hand side.

After noting the positions of the wires on the flood switch and removing them, I unclipped the switch housing from the base panel. The switch housing contains one switch for each drawer. The switches are wired normally closed (NC) and each switch has three spade connections, so it's important to note where the wires went. With the switch housing out, I could ohm out both switches and both checked good. I inspected the contacts and noticed that one of them was oxidized, evidenced by discoloration.

I had a flash-back to my Navy days and heard Petty Officer (AT1) Crowe's voice in my head, "Here, take this ruby red eraser and clean off them contacts. That'll restore the current flow for that circuit. Good to go, Sailor." You gotta understand, Petty Officer Crowe was my technical guru in the Navy--he taught me many of the practical and theoretical troubleshooting skills that I still use today.

So I cleaned the contacts as instructed by Petty Officer Crowe's mental image in my brain and reassembled the dishdrawer. I ran the top drawer and...no F1 error code! I ran it several more times just to be sure.

Good to go, Sailor.

Saturday, October 23, 2004

Mrs. Samurai recently found out that a very nice friend was planning to vote for John Kerry. When asked "My heavens, why?!", this friend, whom we will call Eeyore, responded with her concerns (to put it mildly) about the Republican party. Mrs. Samurai responded to these concerns in the hopes of opening Eeyore's eyes to the truth of the two-party scam. We thought you might enjoy this interchange as well. Can you handle the truth?

Eeyore: The Republican Party, in all honesty, hasn't got an inch of ground to stand on when they talk about standing up for life. This government cares only for the richest people in our society, and is willing to sacrifice everything and everyone else in the attempt to ensure that the interests of that top percent are protected.

Mrs. Samurai: In theory, Republican policies would benefit most of society by minimizing government interference, thus allowing a vibrant economy so people have decent jobs, and minimizing the tax burden so a one-income family can live comfortably. Charity would stay where it belongs - in the community. Unfortunately, Republicans do not live up to their supposed philosophy of minimal government.

Furthermore, Republicans want to be re-elected. That can't happen if they only "help" the top few percent. Even if it's self-serving, every Republican administration tries to help the economy be better so lots of people - including the non-rich - are doing well and will vote for them again.

Democrats, on the other hand, claim to care for the little guy, but the social programs they institute backfire. We now have a multi-generational welfare class. We also have the minimum wage, NAFTA and GATT, which put so much burden on businesses located in our country that jobs have flown out across our borders. The Democratic party has seriously betrayed the very people they claim to be helping. The Democratic party doesn't like to talk about it, but, there are many big businesses who support Democrats. Even Martha Stewart is a Democrat!

Eeyore: I don't think Bush or the people around him care, underneath the pro-life hype, for the person that that fetus is. When the baby is one day old does she have that same right, even if her parents don't have health care? What about at a year? Does she have the right to eat and have a roof over her head

Mrs. Samurai: I have to agree with the Founding Fathers here. We have the right to life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness. Not the GUARANTEE of happiness (or health care, or a roof over our heads, etc.). Before there were so many government programs, there were lots of charity hospitals and free clinics. These places are closing down under the weight of government regulation. I have a doctor friend (a Republican, by the way) who got in serious trouble for trying to see the occasional poor patient free-of-charge. Outrageous!

Eeyore: What if her father has a minimum wage job at Walmart and her mother, with two other preschool children, is unable to work?

Mrs. Samurai: Minimum wage laws have actually forced a decrease in the wages that could be earned by people who are not brand-new to the work force (i.e., teenagers). Our awful tax burden has created the situation where many families cannot survive well on one income. Democrats and Republicans alike have contributed to the decline in real wages over the last few decades. I don't know which party has been the most deceitful.

Eeyore: If a child, heaven forbid, is not American, does she have the right not to be bombed in an attempt for America to secure the oil that lies under the earth by her home, so that people can continue to drive SUVs and other new cars?

Mrs. Samurai: We do not belong in Iraq, but I don't buy that we went there over oil. It's bigger than that. There are a lot of forces in our government pushing for increased involvement in the Middle East, particularly the pro-Israel-at-any-cost segment. And don't forget that the Democrats got us into Vietnam and also bombed Kosovo and aspirin factories. Again, neither party makes us or the rest of the world safer.

Eeyore: Does a child have the right not to have to breathe foul air or dirty water that's been polluted by the companies owned by those fat cats who found it so much to their advantage to sing her praises in the the months before she was born?

Mrs. Samurai: Be sure you include many Federal politicians of both parties in your "fat cat" moniker. I was an environmental engineer for several years before having kids, so I've got some background here. A large amount of the pollution to date has occurred because government has ALLOWED industries to pollute government property. The U.S. government has been a terrible steward - under both parties. Private property ownership encourages cleaner practices because people want to protect what they own.

If you still suspect that we need government to make sure we don't pollute, consider this: Cars built in the 1960's polluted less than those in previous decades. Did the EPA come down on the auto manufacturers? No - the EPA didn't exist yet. The cars became cleaner because that's what people wanted, and that's what they got as soon as the technology existed.

Big corporations are a problem in many ways. But it's important to know that they have flourished in our country precisely because there is a powerful Federal government. There is an incredible regulatory burden on business, and smaller businesses are at a decided disadvantage when trying to keep up with them. Big corporations have tax advantages over smaller businesses as well. The reason big corporations give so much to BOTH Democrat and Republican campaigns is that politicians at the Federal level have a lot of power to grant favors. If we could significantly scale back the Federal government, then these people would have no big favors to bestow and smaller businesses would have more of a chance to flourish. As citizens and consumers, we would in turn have more influence over them.

Eeyore: In other words, you can't be for life if you protect the first nine months of a person and then damn to hell all the months and years that follow.

Mrs. Samurai: Just because someone doesn't think a government program should take care of a lot of these needs doesn't mean they don't care about these people. Many of us know from experience that government programs hurt a lot of the people they are supposed to help and that private charities are generally more efficient and successful. As Harry Browne said, "If there seem to be ten thousand people who can't help themselves, pass a law to help them and there will suddenly be ten million who can't help themselves. The new law will provide the incentive to qualify as needy."

Eeyore: I cannot support all of the Democratic positions (the stand on abortion, and stem cell research, for example). But I do not support the Republicans on anything. Even the way they talk about abortion seems to me to be so hypocritical that I feel offended by their rhetoric. They use the emotional issue of abortion to mask their true feelings about the value of human life.

Mrs. Samurai: I think your condemnation goes a bit too far. I know an awful lot of Republicans personally who are amazingly compassionate people. Granted, there can be a big difference between the upper echelons of a political party and the rest. That's true for both parties. The guys at the top get their supporters to believe they are going to help them, but it's a lie. I am offended equally by the rhetoric of both parties!

Eeyore: Our country is in the most dangerous position that it has been in during my lifetime, if not in its history. If Bush gets in again, I don't think we will ever recover as a nation or as a world.

Mrs. Samurai: The Democrats are great at scaring people with their rhetoric, but Bush is simply the result of more than a century of the centralization of power in the Federal government by both parties. We have a professional class of politicians and bureaucrats whose main goal in life is to keep their positions, not to do what's actually best for people. The Democrats and Republicans play a game where they pretend to have huge differences so we feel like we're making a choice when we vote, but things never really change for the better under either party. I always thought everyone accepted the axiom that "power corrupts." How can we keep giving them more and more and expect something better to come of it?

Vote Libertarian!!!

Ahh, Grasshopper, the Samurai is pleased to help you out of your dilemma. Come, sing along with me...

To unlock the Control Locked feature:

Press and hold the End Of Cycle Signal button for 3 seconds to turn this feature off.

NOTE: When the dryer is running and Control Locked light is on, the dryer can be stopped by pressing the Pause/Cancel button, but cannot be restarted until the control is unlocked.

Friday, October 22, 2004

I just submitted this letter to my local newspaper. It succinctly explains the often-overlooked scientific arguments that support the pro-life position. If you like this letter, feel free to use as much of it as you want in your own letter to your local rag.

Mrs. Samurai

Dear Editor:

Let me first state that I support neither Kerry nor Bush in the upcoming election. (My candidate, Libertarian Michael Badnarik, sadly won't be on the NH ballot.)

A letter in last week's issue defending Sen. Kerry's apparent contradiction when it comes to abortion claimed that determining when life begins is a religious issue, and therefore each person should be free to make their own "choice." This commonly-used argument oversimplifies the abortion issue by ignoring the fact that there is compelling scientific reasoning against abortion. After all, there are even atheists who are pro-life.

Science, not religion, tells us that from the moment of conception a fetus has a complete set of human genetic material. We have identified no point in the pregnancy or birth at which something else is added to transform "tissue" to "a human being." To allow abortion assumes that there is at least a period in a pre-born's time in the womb that it does not deserve the same protection as an older fetus or someone who is outside of the womb. This is a serious assumption! Particularly when scientific advances have consistently moved our ideas of when a fertilized egg becomes a full human-being in one direction only - towards the point of conception. There is the life of a (potential, to some) human being in the balance, and we err on the side of murder?

That the pre-born baby needs the "life support" of the womb for awhile shouldn't affect her status as a human being. After all, an infant is still completely dependent on others for survival, and that doesn't make it our choice whether or not to let her live. To use another analogy, let's say a person is on life-support in the hospital, but it's almost certain that he will fully recover within 9 months' time. Most, if not all, would agree that it would be unthinkable to unhook him from that life-support.

Just because pregnancies sometimes occur in difficult situations doesn't change how we should view our options. Lots of humans can cause difficulties in our lives - mentally ill family members, special needs children, elderly parents with dementia, etc. There are various ways we can cope with these situations, but murder is not an accepted one. I think we've only gotten away with abortion all of this time because, unless we have an ultrasound, we can't see the baby, so we can pretend it's not a real person. Unfortunately, many young women who undergo abortions never hear these arguments, but later realize with guilt and sorrow the truth about the "choice" they made.

You didn't say whether this is a gas or electric dryer; however, in my infinite wisdom and mercy, the Samurai divines that you have an electric dryer. Therefore, we shall proceed on this infallible divination. If I'm wrong, ask for a refund.

This might be a classic case of a grounded heating element. Oh, I know what you're asking, "A do-what?" Say it with me one time: grounded heating element. This is where the electric heating element (which is really just a coil of steel that glows orange-hot when current runs through it) has split in two and one part is touching the dryer cabinet or the heating element housing. (A bobby pin or coin or some other conductive debris that got into the heating element area can create this same condition.) This makes a direct connection from one leg of the power supply to ground, i.e., a short. The circuit breaker is doing its job in cutting power to the dryer.

The other possibility is that the circuit breaker itself has gone bad and is no longer able to carry a load without tripping. If you do need to replace the breaker, make sure you use one with the the same current rating as the original. For example, don't replace a 30-amp breaker with a 40-amp breaker.

Ok, happy fixing!

One of the intellectually-bankrupt Left's favorite terms to throw around is Social Justice. What Leftists (i.e., communists, socialists, and fascists) really mean by this lofty term is, "I'll use government force to steal the fruits of your labor (usually money via taxation) that you've honestly earned through your own work and creativity and give it to bureaucrats and other leeches who did nothing to earn it."

Contrast this with what Libertarians mean when we talk about Social Justice. Simply, to Libertarians, Social Justice means that you, and you alone, own yourself and ALL the fruits of your labors. You are free to give away those fruits to whomever you wish, and government force shall never be used to steal it from you.

Ok, glad I could clear up that bit of Orwellian double-speak for you.

I just learned that Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Presidential candidate, will be on the ballot in 48 states. I was delighted that my party was going to have such a strong national presence in this upcoming election but was also curious about which two bonehead states excluded him from the ballot. Turns out they are Oklahoma and, to my eternal shame, my very own Live-Free-or-Die New Hampshire! I confirmed this depressing news at the New Hampshire Secretary of State website. You can read lots of good discussion on how this happened here.

Ralph Nader, however, did make the ballot in New Hampshire (but also not Oklahoma--what the hell is the problem with those nutty Okies?). Although I disagree with Nader on several key issues, he is absolutely a league above the Tweedledumb vs. Tweedledumber choice the we have with the R's and D's and he is a candidate with integrity. As Justin Raimondo observed, beneath his leftist garb, Nader has a glimmer of the Old Right in him.

So, cheated out of the option of voting for my ideal Libertarian Presidential candidate, I will settle for casting my vote for a man with whom I don't agree 100%, but whom I trust and respect. Although it's true that he doesn't have a prayer of being elected, the idea is to send a message to the Beltway Bandits telling them that we're wise to their one-party scam masquerading with two different names. Can you imagine the shockwaves that would ripple through those spineless thieves in DC when third party candidates rack up just 5% of the vote? Let's make 'em crap their pants!

If you're in New Hampshire, vote Nader for President. Outside New Hampshire (except Oklahoma), vote Badnarik. And if you live in Oklahoma, just stay home on November 2 and boycott the faux-election.

Monday, October 18, 2004

I gotta say, when I hear someone screeching with religious fervor for either Bush or Kerry, I just shake my head at the poor, blind dupe: yet another sheeple led to the info-slaughter by Big Media working in cahoots with Big Gubmint to create the illusion of a real choice. From a Libertarian perspective, Bush and Kerry look like Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. Choosing between Bush or Kerry is like choosing between Lucifer or Satan.

Remember: voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. Voting for either Bush or Kerry is really a vote for the Boot On Your Neck Party.

Most Americans are libertarian to the core but they just don't know it. Once most people learn about what Libertarians stand for, they immediately identify with us. Liberals are losers who believe the gubmint (i.e., you and me) owes them something for nothing. And conservatism is dead--it's been taken over by a cabal of neo-cons chasing some utopian dream about waging democracy on the middle east.

So, why haven't you heard more about the Libertarians? It's not for lack of trying! Big Media spikes coverage of third party candidates. Yes, candidates--plural. Although Libertarians are the largest of the third party movements, there are other significant third parties. Who Are the Third Party Candidates?

The Demopublicans and Republicrats have colluded to exclude the third parties from the debates. The Libertarian Party of Arizona filed a lawsuit on the grounds that taxpayer money is being used to fund what is essentially a private debate that favored the R's and D's. Watch the REAL Presidential debate: Badnarik (Libertarian) vs. Cobb (Greens). (If you'd rather download the audio-only for your MP3 player, you can get it here.)

And I don't buy into this crap that voting for a third party is "wasting a vote." The only vote wasted is the one not based on principle. Send a message to the Beltway Bandits: vote Libertarian.

I'm up well past midnight working on the website, reading the latest news while Sirius Left of Center (Channel 26) cranks out new and classic punk rock: Dead Boys, Black Flag, Joan Jett, Blondie, Pixies and more, one right after the other. All high-energy, hard-driving cuts. It's a show on Sundays from 11 pm to 2 am called The Punk Yard.

Satellite radio: rockin' your world.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Have you heard about the new Google Desktop search utility? It's a cool new download from Google that let's you search your entire hard drive for pictures, web pages, email, MP3's, documents, or anything else you're looking for. No more of those frustrating searches using the cloddish file search feature built into Windows in a futile attempt to find that letter you wrote to Aunt Mabel last year. You download this free, nifty little program from desktop.google.com and install it. After it indexes your hard drive, you'll find that letter to Aunt Mabel in less than a second. Oh, and it gets better...

Google has integrated it into its regular web search. So, let's say you've installed the desktop search program and you go the Google homepage to find a recipe for chocolate-covered cockroaches, just like Momma used to make when you were a kid. Well now, in addition to the web page and image searching, you'll see a tab to search your desktop right there. So if you're not finding what you need on the web, you search your desktop and, BAM!, there's that forgotten recipe for chocolate-covered cockroaches that yo Momma emailed you two years ago.

After I installed this handy utility and was playing around with it, I took a step back and was blown away at how Google has become such an essential, even indispensible part of my internet life. Here's a list of all the Googlets that I use:

• Web Search: Google is, hands down, the killer search engine on the web and it's the one I always trust to give me the best results when searching the web.
• AdSense for Search: I use Google' site search as part of its AdSense program. This search utility gives excellent results for on-site searches. As I continue to add content to this website, I find myself increasingly relying on this site search to find things that I wrote last month, last year, whenever.
• AdSense for Content: This is Google's revenue-sharing ad program where you place context-relevant ads on your site and has been an extremely significant source of revenue to keep Fixitnow.com going. So, if you see any interesting Google ads while you're here, feel free to click away and check 'em out!
• Blogger: This website is published and powered using Blogger. It makes publishing updates quick and painless. You don't need to buy a webhosting plan because they'll even host it for free. (I do use a separate host for this website because it gives other benefits like file sharing and email addresses that I wouldn't have otherwise.) And it's so easy to use, even my 12-year old daughter maintains a blog. "Push-button publishing for the people." But, in addition to standard text publishing, Google provides tools for multi-media publishing such as...
• Audioblogger: This free service lets you make spoken audio posts to your blog. I can be on top of a mountain and phone in an audio post from the summit. Or, sometimes I just call up with a weird noise and write a goofy story to go with it. It gives a whole 'nother medium to create with. And, of course, no website is complete without pictures. Google has this covered, too...
• Hello BloggerBot: Yet another freebie that let's you quickly and easily publish photos. You just pick select the picture on your hard drive or CD that you want to upload and BloggerBot does the rest: uploads it, resizes it, makes a clickable thumbnail that opens a larger view of the picture, does all the HTML for you and then publishes it all to your site. It takes what used to be a tedious half hour task and reduces it all to just a couple clicks and few seconds.
• Google Toolbar: This is like a Swiss Army knife for your browser. I've used this toolbar since it came out over a year ago and use it constantly. I like always having a Google box available right there in my browser for quick searches. The popup blocker initially was extremely effective but the new generation of popups are getting good at faking it out. The other feature it has is a built-in Blog This button that let's me make posts to my blog on the fly when I'm surfing and come across something noteworthy.
• Deskbar: Not to be confused with the Desktop Search that I started out talking about, this is a separate utility that goes into the Windows XP toolbar and adds Google search, a dictionary, a thesaurus and other reference utilities to your desktop. The results all open in small, built-in mini-browser. I use the dictionary and thesaurus functions a lot when I'm composing posts.

There are lots of other Googlets but I've only listed the ones that I use most often to illustrate just how much my work on the web depends on Google in some way. If anything happens to Google, I'm screwed. I also do a lot of Yahoo's but I'll save that for another post.

Come git me, Mother, I'm through.

Friday, October 15, 2004

I'm trying to write a new pearl of appliance repair wisdom to post but I keep getting distracted by the good jams they're playing on Sirius. So, I figure I'll just go with the flow and write about satellite radio.

If you haven't checked out satellite radio yet, do it now. You get about 120 channels of music, news, and talk for a just a few bucks a month. The music is CD-quality and 100% commercial free. I subscribe to Sirius because that's what Wilbur sells at the local Radio Shack here in New London. I'm a little irked at Radio Shack Corp., though, because they just started offering a web-only $20 rebate on Sirius Orbiter receivers. This is a weenie thing to do because it undermines the local Radio Shack store owners. Mostly I'm annoyed because I want $20. Hey, that's more than a case of Tuckerman's Pale Ale!

Some of these names can be confusing so lemme clarify some things. Sirius is the name of the satellite service. Orbiter is the brand name of equipment sold by Radio Shack that lets you receive the satellite service. I suspect that Orbiter is one of those Radio Shack-only brands because I've not seen it offered anywhere else.

Anyway, I have the Sirius Orbiter boom box set up downstairs at my main workstation. So, most every night, when I'm down here working on this website, I'm jamming on one of the Sirius rock channels. Sirius has 17 rock channels but, in the evenings, I'm usually tuned to Jam_ON (channel 17) where Adam Foley is cranking out the good jams from 7 pm to 1 am every weeknight. When a particularly good jam comes on, such as Derek and the Dominoes Jam IV, I plug in my Sennheiser HD497's and turn it up without disturing Mrs. Samurai sleeping in the bedroom directly above me.

If you're a talk radio junkie, there's a whole lotta yakkin' going on in the Sirius talk channels. The talk genres tend be mostly from the Republicrat and Demopublican camps--same old brain-dead, party-line fecal matter; nothing very thought provoking. The one minor disappointment with Sirius is the lack of alternative talk shows from libertarians and free-market thinkers. It's not like there's a shortage of libertarian radio personalities. I download libertarian and free-market shows on the web for my Rio MP3 player all the time. Three of my faves are:

• Harry Browne
• Ludwig Von Mises Institute
• Free-Market News Network

But, since I mostly use Sirius for its music, and I have good online sources for my libertarian propaganda fix, Sirius' shortcoming in this area is a trifling thing.

Bottom line recommendation: get Sirius satellite radio. You'll be glad you did.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

For over two years now, The Appliantology Group has been hosted at MSN Groups. Despite some minor limitations, it has proven to be a popular and salubrious format for the AG. The lack of a site search, however, is a glaring shortcoming. As posts have been added and answered at the repair forum, it has turned into a colossal database of appliance repair information with no way to search it...until now. I've found a way to search the group using Google. Here's how to do it:

• Go to Google's homepage.
• Enter in your search term followed by site:groups.msn.com appliantology, all on the same line.
• You'll be presented with pages of your search results, all from within the AG.

Let's take a ezzample. S'ppose I have a problem with my Whirlpool gas dryer. I might use a search term such as Whirlpool gas dryer no heat. To search the AG, I'd go to Google and enter the following search term: Whirlpool gas dryer no heat site:groups.msn.com appliantology. That search gives 21 results, shown here.

Seek and ye shall find!

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

It was such a pretty Autumn day up here in New Hampster that I just had to take m'boyz on an easy hike up Mt. Osceola. It's one of the NH 48-4,000 footers and we had planned on hiking it earlier this summer but the trailhead was infested with people. This is one of those rare hikes in the White Mountains where you're rewarded with magnificent views for very little effort. From the trailhead to the summit is just over three easy miles and the views, well, words only cheapen it. You can get a glimpse of what it was like from these two pictures below.

The Boyz on Mt. Osceola. That's the Tripyramid mountains in the background. (I had the date set wrong on my camera--pardon the crayon correction.)

Looking at East Osceola and beyond from the expansive summit of Mt. Osceola.

This was the 15th-4,000-footer for my little Samurai guys. I've already hiked all 48 including many during winter and several of my favorite peaks multiple times. I'm hoping to complete the 48 again with my little Samurai guys before my back gives out completely.

I was recently diagnosed with lumbar spinal stenosis, which is essentially advanced arthritis in the vertabrae. No doubt this was a result of the ruptured disc I had four years ago. The sciatic pain in my right buttcheek and foot has been ratcheting up lately so I finally had an MRI and just got the results. The good news is that this is usually treatable without surgery but, if surgery is required, it is very effective at clearing it up. The bad news is that, until I get it under control or have surgery, it hurts like hell to hike these mountains. So I gobble Vitamin I (ibuprofen) and just suck it up. Then, when I get back home, quaffing a few brewskis helps blur the pain.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Gettin' purdy up here in God's Country. Was up on Mt. Kearsarge yesterday feasting my peepers on a prime crop of autumn foliage below. Check it out:

Autumn view from the top of Mt. Kearsarge.

We're lucky that we ended up settling down up here in New Hampster. S'ppose, for ezzample, that I ended up in New Jerbel, several states south of us. New Jerbel, like my native Gawga, are both good places to be from, but not to be in.

Yep, I grew up in Gawga, loved it so much that I quit high school when I was 17 and joined the Navy, primarily so I could live somewhere, anywhere, outside of Georgia. Compared to being a teenager in Georgia during the 70's, being a teenage sailor in the U.S. Navy was a liberating experience.

I've always been deeply conflicted about the Southland. I respect the Confederacy, believe they exercised the right of legal secession, just as any state or group of states today could because the Federal gubmint is merely a creature of the states, not vice versa. But Lincoln, the Anti-Christ of presidents, turned this concept of constitutional Federalism on its head. Think about it: 13 British colonies, the lawful property of the British crown, rebelled against their king and we properly revere those men as patriots and Founders. Yet, when the Southern states declared they were withdrawing from a Union into which they had voluntarily entered and lawfully seceded from Congress, Lincoln gave them four years of fire and sword ending with Sherman's march to the sea. If you condemn the Southern Secession from the Union, then you must be consistent and condemn the American Revolution. I applaud both as righteous struggles against tyranny. The South just happened to lose their struggle so history wrote them a different story.

To call the Southern war of Secession a "Civil War" is to mindlessly parrot government propaganda. In a civil war, you have two parties fighting for control of the same land. Russia and France had civil wars. The South didn't want to take over the North, they simply wanted to be left the hell alone from Yankee meddlers and burdensome overtaxation imposed on them by the more populous Northern states. We don't allow the phrase "Civil War" in our house--that conflict is properly referred to as the War of Yankee Aggression.

Although my ideological roots are Southern, my genetic roots are far removed. I am a second generation American of Scots-Irish and Greek extraction. It's my Greek heritage that makes me an alien in the South and, ironically, much more comfortable in Yankeeland. Southerners tend to be very conformist. The Southern pecking order is that the best are Baptists; Methodists and Presbyterians are tolerated; Catholics are instruments of Satan; and Greek Orthodox, such as myself, well, we must be Zeus-worshipping pagans 'cuz whoever heard o' such nonsense. I actually had one of my school teachers tell me this!

And then there's appearance. "True southerners" have straight hair, parted on the side, and preferably blue eyes. Kinky headed, dark-haired, brown-eyed, glasses wearing guys like me were accused of being Jewish (*gasp*) and never had a chance of being one of the true "good ol' boys." In high school, while the good ol' boys played football and stuffed Skoal in their mouths, I usually hung out with the Jewish kids, talking about politics and playing chess.

So you can see how I'm deeply conflicted over the South. On the one hand, I fervently believe that the South had, and has, the right to secession as does any state or group of states. On the other hand, growing up in the South was just one long cultural and social gulag. I was treated better as an enlisted sailor in the U.S. Navy, an instrument of Yankee power, and felt more a part of it than I did any part of the South in all my years growing up there. Would you like fries with that serving of irony?

I've always thought of myself as a Southerner; I've come to realize that I am not. I am a Yankee who, through a quirk of fate, happened to grow up in the South and, in so doing, acquired some uniquely Southern notions about federalism and state's rights.

Today, I see Yankees doing what Yankees have always done--meddling in other people's affairs and telling people how they ought to live. We saw this in Waco, Serbia, South America, and most recently, we see it in Iraq. The world is full of bad guys, always has been, always will be. And until one of those bad guys threatens our vital American interest, it's not worth expending American blood and treasure chasing some neo-con utopian dream of "waging Democracy" on people who haven't the first clue about what self-government is all about. We used to know what self-government was before we became vassals of Big Brother through things like the Income Tax, Social(ist) (In)Security, gun control, fiat currency taken off the gold standard, and the Patriot Act.

Just as the over-reaching ambitions of all historical empires precipitated their demise, history will show that the current war in Iraq marked the beginning of the end of the American Empire. And then, like the Phoenix rising out of the ashes, the South shall rise again. Not the geographic South, but the Southern spirit of independence, decentralized government, and local control.

It's pretty damn amazing what you can see in Autumn leaves. Enjoy the foliage!

Monday, October 11, 2004

Ahoy, mate! Check with your local plumbing codes to see what the specific requirements are for drain hose air gaps in your neck of the woods. In some areas, codes allow looping the dishwasher’s drain hose in a high arc up under the countertop as an alternative to installing an air gap. It's also worth noting that you can plumb it anyway you want in your own house. The only time the plumbing code is a consideration is if and when you go to sell your house. But as long as you're doing the work on your own house, you can do whatever you want with your property.

In my au fait opinion, air gaps are over-rated and too often installed when they're not needed. And, you know, I've never seen a dishwasher actually suck water up from the drain hose. Sometimes, I suspect they get installed only to add to the cost of the job (if contracted out) or because the code requirements are not clearly understood.

For example, in a dishwasher that drains into a sink pipe before the p-trap (see Figure 1), the open sink drain serves as the air gap thus eliminating the possibility of getting poopy water sucked back up into your dishwasher. The dishwasher can drain directly into the sink’s trap if you don’t have a disposal. Replace a section of the sink drain’s tailpiece with a dishwasher tailpiece, which has a short T-shape nipple that connects to the dishwasher’s drain hose. Cut the bottom of the sink’s tailpiece with a hacksaw or tubing cutter and connect the new tailpiece with slip nuts and washers.

A common dishwasher drain hose scheme that doesn't use an air gap is to run the drain hose from the dishwasher’s waste outlet to a tee above the sink’s drain trap or to a dishwasher inlet on a garbage disposal (sealed with a “knockout” plug that’s removed for a dishwasher hookup).

Air gaps aweigh!

Many Grasshoppers have written inquiring about the Samurai's house. Here are a couple pictures of the Samurai's dojo that should fullfil these voyeuristic requests.

The Samurai's home from the outside. Plenty of fresh outside air inside the house is one of the secrets of Samurai's good health!

A peek inside our family room--pardon the mess!

Friday, October 08, 2004

As many of my faithful grasshoppers know, the Samurai has been developing an appliance that reads thoughts and converts them into audible sound. The appliance is called a Mental Sensory Transducer and is based on the work of Ingo Swann, the pioneer of Remote Viewing. Now, for the first time, we can directly listen to someone's thoughts as they occur.

I've just completed the first round of prototype tests and the initial results are very promising indeed! Here is a recording I made using the Mental Sensory Transducer of my thoughts while on an appliance repair service call. Let's listen:

All of us here at Samurai Labs International are very excited about the possibilities for this new appliance to promote World Peace. I expect that very soon the CIA will be contacting me to develop several production models for them--imagine what a powerful weapon this will be in the war against terrorism! Soon, I'll be cashing out of this appliance repair rat-race and riding that golden parachute to Easy Street. See you on Hollywood Squares!

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

The Samurai's service van for his day job.

A peek inside the back of the Samurai's service van. Lucky you!

Dr. Samurai makes housecalls with his appliance medic kit.

A rare and privileged peek inside Dr. Samurai's bag o' tricks.

M'main tool roll. 86.4% of the repairs I do are made using tools in this most excellent tool roll.

Digital and analog multimeters. I prefer an analog meter but use the digital when I need the extra capability it offers such as current and temperature measurement.

Three essential wire working tools: cutters, strippers, and crimpers.

Illumination of the work area is critical for both diagnosis and repair. While perfecting the craft of the appliance repairing arts, much of which takes place in dark, moldy, sometimes scary places, I have become a connoisseur of portable spot illumination devices, sometimes referred to as "flashlights."

Much appliance work is done on your knees. If you don't protect them, you'll be getting knee replacement surgery by the time you're 50.

Monday, October 04, 2004

NEWS FLASH -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

By popular demand, the world-famous Appliantology repair forum will be closed down at its current location at ezBoard and moved to its new home. This change is effective immediately.

The spokeswoman for Fixitnow.com, Kujira Mifune, reports that loyal Appliantology Grasshoppers from all over the globe have flooded the Samurai International Headquarters in New London, New Hampshire, with emails, letters, faxes, and origami asking that the repair forum be moved back to its old home at MSN Groups. Samurai Appliance Repair Man called a meeting of the Fixitnow.com board of directors to consider the matter. The Board unanimously decided to move the repair forum back to MSN Groups as requested and to shut down the repair forum at ezBoard. Sanjuro Takimashe, CFO, noted that ezBoard charges a bandwidth-based fee to host the forum which costs hundreds of dollars annually whereas the extra storage fee for photo hosting at MSN Groups is only $30 per year.

Summary: The Appliantology repair forum has been moved to here.

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The Samurai finally gets hip with the MP3 player revolution. I've been wanting to get an MP3 player so I could download and listen to two of my favorite radio shows: Coast to Coast AM and the Phil Hendrie Show. As an online subscriber to both of these shows, I get access to both streamed and MP3 archives of the shows. I used to listen to the streams but got tired of being stuck to the computer if I wanted to hear the shows. The solution: an MP3 player.

After much hand-wringing over which player to buy and one false start, I ended up buying the Rio Cali. The first player I bought was an Apple iPod. Several things annoyed me about it: the LooneyTunes software did not mesh with my brain, the rechargeable battery drained quickly, it was heavy, expensive ($250), and that damn menu wheel drove me insane. I returned it. I had given up on the whole MP3 player thing when I happened to see the Rio Cali Sport in a Radio Shack at the mall in Concord. It was everything the iPod wasn't: intuitive to use, lightweight, runs for 18 hours on a single AAA battery (even longer if you use rechargeable NiMH batteries), and over $100 less than the iPod (you can buy 'em for $110 at Amazon). It even has an FM tuner which I use in conjunction with my Sirius satellite radio rig in my van--more about that later. It comes with 256 MB of flash memory which, for my use, is usually more than enough. You can buy an SD card and double the memory for about $25.

The Rio has turned out to be the perfect solution and has even opened up a whole new world of online radio shows to me. If you have an MP3 player and you're looking for talk radio content to add, here are some sources I've been enjoying:

• The Harry Browne Radio Shows: Harry Browne, a past Libertarian presidential candidate (for whom I voted in the last presidential election), does two excellent radio shows: one is about libertarian philosophy and issues and the other is about investment advice. Both are great listening.
• The Weekend Interview Show with Scott Horton: A libertarian talk show featuring thought-provoking interviews with prominent libertarians, classical liberals, and traditional conservatives.
• Ludwig von Mises Media Archives: This is the motherlode of libertarian and free-market teaching. A vast collection of scholarly treatises on all sorts of topics from a free-market, libertarian perspective.
• WebTalk Radio Show with Rob and Dana Greenlee: An informative and entertaining show about the bleeding edge of the web's technological evolution.
• Holy Cross Antiochian Orthodox Church Music Ministry: A great collection of some beautiful Orthodox Christian music. I love Byzantine chant and this is the only music I have loaded on my Rio.

Most people probably get an MP3 player to listen to music and the software that comes bundled with 'em is definitely geared toward that. But setting up and maintaining your music library on an MP3 player is a tedious and colossal waste of time, something of which I'm always in short supply. The last thing I wanted to do was eat up more precious time dinking around with music files. I use my Rio to listen to radio shows and lectures. For music, I use Sirius satellite radio. I figure it's worth a meager $12 a month to have professional DJs put together a great line up of rock n' roll music for me. (You can get a complete Sirius radio channel guide in pdf format here.) If you're unfamiliar with satellite radio, check out these articles in the Crutchfield Advisor and Wired News for some good background information.

So, I'm sitting here at my computer after midnight, writing this post and jamming on one of the 17 rock channels on Sirius--commercial free! If a song comes on that sucks, I just flip to one of the other channels where, inevitably, I find a song I like and then I go back to pecking on the keyboard. Sometimes this keeps me going until the sun comes up.

But the other cool thing about Sirius is that I have a great selection of news and music, with perfect reception, for those long commutes to the White Mountains. For example, from my home in New London, New Hampshire, it takes two and a half hours to drive to the Wildcat Trailhead on Route 16, south of Gorham. Driving to the Mahoosuc Range in the North Country is at least a three hour drive. Flipping around on Sirius makes the trip seem shorter.

Ah, Classic Vinyl just started playing BTO's Let It Ride. I'm gonna grab a brewski and kick back a while. Later.

Friday, October 01, 2004

Looking down into the Pemigewassett Wilderness from atop Mt. Garfield.

The classic view into the Pemi from Mt. Garfield.