From maytag.com:

“In 1907, Frederick Louis Maytag entered the washer business with one goal in mind: to build quality appliances from durable and long-lasting materials.”

Obviously they’ve changed their business practices in the 100 years since that time.

Once again, we have a problem with our 3 1/2 year old Maytag dishwasher. I’m not going to rehash the endless cycle of problems we’ve had (you can read that here). Since then, the racks have started rusting (again), the plastic drop-down site racks no longer stay up, and the door latch has broken again.

Last night takes the cake, tho. I usually set the dishwasher to run every night after we’re in bed. I was woken up by the machine making a horrible grinding/moaning noise. It appears the motor has broken, for the 3rd time.

The part is covered under warranty, but the service call(s) wouldn’t be.

I’ve had enough. I’d get more enjoyment standing in the street and setting $20 bills on fire than I would paying to fix this worthless piece of junk. Evidently lots of other people have the same problems.

Sorry, Maytag. I’m done with you. I’ll never buy another of your appliances, and I’ll recommend to everyone I know that they don’t either.

Yes, it’s all about ME.

Well, what a long week. It feels like we’ve been on a roller coaster.

After we weren’t able to visit one breeder last weekend to see their facilities, we did more web searching for a reputable breeder in the St. Louis area. We found a couple of people to contact on the American Spaniel Club’s website. I emailed Sandy Roland of S’Posan’s Cockers. Sandy is involved with the Cocker Spaniel Club of Easter Missouri as well as a breeder and agility trainer of cockers.

I ended up talking with Sandy for almost an hour one evening, and she recommended a couple of breeders in the area. After emailing back and forth with a couple of them, Jane and Paul Moody of Moody’s Countryside Cockers said they had a couple of pups available. Additionally, they would be in our area Wednesday evening and could bring them down for us to see.

So now we have a 6 month old parti-color cocker running around our house: Ignatius Thistlewhite, named for a character in the Christmas special The Year Without a Santa Claus

He’s really adjusted to our family well. Having a pup is quite different from Wuf when he older, and he can hear us!

After 3 years, chele and I are ready to bring a new dog into our family. It’s been almost 3 years since we had to put Wuf down, and while we still miss him, we miss having the companionship of a dog in the house. The kids are old enough to have some responsibility with the dog as well.We’re looking for another cocker spaniel, but it’s been hard finding a reputable breeder. We’ve done a lot of web research but it’s difficult to tell the quality of a breeder from a website and pictures.
The right breeder and puppy is out there for us, the challenge is finding him.

P.S.: Wuf, we miss you.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.1. Painless and simple.

First wave down.

We’ve survived the first wave of this ice storm intact. We didn’t lose power, and nothing hit the house or cars. Pictures at:

January 2007 ice storm
Next wave of sleet/freezing rain/ice starts this evening!

Luke 2:8-14 (KJV)

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

I had an exciting weekend! Short story: Saturday afternoon I had my appendix removed.

So now I’m recovering at home.  More updates later as I feel better.

Fun little diversion: This flash game shows a montage of images returned by Google Image Search. The player has to guess what keyword returned the images.

Guess-the-Google

I’ve been going through LinkedIn and re-connecting with former co-workers and friends. If you’re on LinkedIn and know me, reconnect at:

When I upgraded to WordPress 2, I turned on the Akismet plugin. The description of the plugin is to the point: “Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not.”

I haven’t had to moderate a spam comment since I enabled it.

chele’s Dad and I spent the afternoon today attempting to bleed the brakes on the Spitfire. After not getting any fluid out of the rear lines, we discovered that the rear reservoir on the master cylinder was empty. It also leaks fluid all over the firewall and into the drivers footwell.

Joy.

Thankfully I had ordered a rebuild kit for the master cylinder a couple of years ago. Unfortunately that means the car stays on the jackstands until I get the it rebuilt; the firewall stripped of rust, sanded, and painted; and the brakes bled yet again.

Yesterday evening the UPS driver rang the doorbell. The rear brake lines I had ordered from SpitBits had arrived! I eagerly opened the box and compared them against the original… YES, they were the same length!

After getting the kids to bed, put them on the car. I was surprised how quickly they went on. Even after 32 years of rust and grime, everything unstuck without too much torquing.

Tonight I’ll bleed the system out, and perhaps get the new clutch slave cylinder on.

I stopped by the course at First Baptist Church St. Charles on the way home from work today and threw a quick round. My elbow is finally healed and I was able to throw without pain. It was a perfect day for disc golf, and it showed in my score: 1 over for the entire 18 holes, the best I’ve ever done. I’ll admit, I was playing from the red tees (the easiest), so I didn’t have any killer long shots to make, but still, it was a great round. My best throw was a 70′ second shot on 13 that I intended to just put near the pin. The wind and throw was perfect, because I heard that satisfying *clang* sound of a disc hitting chain.

It’s great to be back on the course.

After Easter service this morning and the kids doing the bunny basket thing, I went out and puttered around on the Spit. None of the four side running lights were working, and the two license plate lights were out as well. All of them needed new bulbs, and the left plate light had a loose wire. Replacing them was tedious but rewarding.

However, when I pushed the switch to turn them on this evening, I felt something break inside the switch. It had felt stiff ever since I got the car, and it picked now to give up the ghost. I’ll pull it out of the dash tomorrow. I need to replace the hazard switch as well, so it looks like my next order from VickyBrits will be for electrical stuff.

I also worked on putting in the ‘replacement’ horns my Dad gave me with the car. They’re from an ‘88 Sundance, so they’re not original. The factory ‘Clear Hooter’ horns are rusted solid and I haven’t found an easy way to disassemble them. It looks like I need to fab up some kind of bracket to mount the other horns, tho.

I haven’t started the brake or clutch work yet. I think I’m just doing little stuff on the car as a way of procrastinating.

The work on the Spitfire continues.

The original owner had a problem with the turn signal switch while he owned it. Rather than simply buying a new switch, he had a “friend” who supposedly knew something about electrical systems “repair” it. The result was a two-way toggle switch hacked into a badly drilled hole in the wood dashboard facia. It wasn’t installed very well and would fall out on a regular basis. I just used the standard arm signals when signalling turns until I could fix it.

Today I installed a replacement switch from Victoria British, a parts supplier outside of Kansas City. I ended up having to use some of the hack-job wiring to get it to work correctly, but I did put a new plug-in terminal on the wire and convered it with heat-shrink tubing. Now the switch on the steering column works!

On to the brake lines next, as well as figuring out why the sidemarker lights aren’t working.

So Thursday evening I get home from work and find chele sitting on the floor in front of the sink, mopping up water. The aging garbage disposal had exploded out its drain pipe and puked water all over the under-sink cabinet. I’d repaired the connection at least once and was itching for an excuse to replace it anyway.

We took the kids out for supper and stopped at Home Depot. 40 minutes of under-cabinet work after the kids were asleep and the new disposal is working great.

Why I will never buy another Maytag appliance again:

A couple of weeks ago the handle on our dishwasher broke. chele was squeezing it one morning to get the dishes out and it snapped at the hinge. The only way to get the door open was to forcefully push up on the handle while yanking on the door. Joy.

Repairclinic.com had the part for $4.95 plus $4.95 shipping. I tried our local appliance parts dealer and was told that the handle wasn’t available separately. I’d need to special order a complete latch assembly for $60. Figuring that $10 for the handle was a good deal (and if it didn’t work I could get the latch later), I went with Repairclinic. 4 days later I’m arm deep in the door of the dishwasher, removing the latch and shaving the handle to fit.

The replacement handle works great. If that were the only repair I’ve had to do on the dishwasher, I wouldn’t be complaining. However, it isn’t. We went with this particular brand and model after reading Consumer Reports and seeing that this was top rated. In the two years we’ve owned it, it has had the following problems:

• The motor has been replaced twice.
• The “Lifetime Warrantied Rust-Free” racks rusted.
• One of the wheels on the top rack broke in two and wouldn’t stay screwed in anymore.

Now, if this were a cheap dishwasher, I’d just file those under “That’s Life” and go on. But it wasn’t a cheap model, and I was hoping to get a few good years out of it.

That’s why when we had to replace our washing machine, it wasn’t a Paytag, it was an LG

I upgraded WordPress on ammond.org today to 2.0.2. Like every other upgrade, it was a piece of cake. Back up the database and WordPress files, untar the new software, hit the ‘Upgrade’ URL.

Now to go digging into the new plugins.

After a couple of years of not working much on the Spitfire, I started up again. The church we attend is considering having a car show on Father’s Day, so I’m getting some much needed repairs done for that. One of the messiest will be replacing all the flexible brake lines. After 30 years, they’ve developed cracks:

I plan on replacing the clutch slave cylinder as well, and putting down the new carpet set.