I was talking to a grasshopper on live chat the other night and he told me to tell my boss that I was doing a great job. So I shuffled upstairs to my wife and said, "Great job, Hon."

I’ve talked to several other people on chat who think Fixitnow.com is a high-budget operation with a staff of technicians and webmasters. I don’t know if that means I’m doing a good job or not. The truth is that this entire website, every little typo, every poorly-formed sentence, and all the pages you sift through looking for pearls of appliance wisdom are crafted by my boney fingers, and mine alone, and it all happens down in my basement. Yep, just little ol’ me down in my damp, dark basement, all alone. I’ve spent thousands of hours down here working on this website making it a comprehensive, useful, easy-to-use, and most of all, fun place for you to come and learn how to fix your appliances.

As for the budget, that comes from Beer Fund donations, which have been far too little to justify the time I’ve spent away from my family to work on this website. It’s amazing: people won’t think twice about shelling out a few bucks for an album or tickets to a movie, but somehow think that good, convenient appliance repair help should be free, "’cuz it’s on the innernet, an’ all." I can’t count the number of people who, when I absolutely nailed their appliance problem on live help, were very thankful, promised to donate to the Beer Fund, but never did. If I could pay real-world expenses on empty promises, I’d be living in a mansion right now.

But these fiscal challenges have created an excellent opportunity for me to develop a cool new program here at Fixitnow.com: Live Appliance Repair Consultations. I think it’s a great way for you to get personal, immediate help fixing your appliances while helping to ensure that I can meet my on-going operating expenses. Check it out.

"But wait," you cry, "I thought this website was supposed to be free?" To misquote the late, great Plato, "What is free, Phaedrus, and what is not? Need we anyone tell us these things?" Yes, the vast repository of appliance wisdom here at Fixitnow.com will continue to be freely available to all seekers of appliance wisdom. This includes the Online Repair Manuals, the accumulated wisdom in Moostafa’s Mecca of Appliance Repair and the many resources available at the Appliantology group, such as the repair photos and the help forum. But personal, live appliance repair consultation with me should certainly be worth a very modest, even ridiculously low consulting fee. The consulting fee is on a per-issue basis, so if you pay for a consultation on your dishwasher and you later need help with your dryer, it’s a separate fee. On the other hand, if it takes 27 chat sessions to solve your problem, there’s no additional charge–one fee covers one problem until it’s whipped.

And just what makes me so special that I think I can charge for advice? Well, I could start thumping my chest about my two engineering degrees and years of appliance repair experience but, honestly, I think that’s a little crass. The fact is that I have real-world, valuable appliance repair knowledge and I can absolutely help you fix it yourself, either through the free resources available on my website or via a live appliance repair consultation for a miniscule fee.

If you’ve donated to the Beer Fund in the past, I am grateful for your support and I honor your integrity. And to show my gratitude for your willingness to support this website, all past donors to the Beer Fund, in any amount, even as little as $1, will receive Live Appliance Repair Consultations on any appliance they’re working on for as long as they live…or for as long as this website lives, whichever ends first. Just identify yourself as a past Beer Fund contributor when you ring me up for live help so I can look you up (I have a record of all past contributors) and we’ll go to work fixing your appliance.

Ok, let’s get stuff fixed!