Blessed by the Potato

After moving in, we noticed that the relatively new (<4 years old “Crosley”) washing machine was not doing a very good job of getting the water out of our clothes in the spin cycle. It got progressively worse so that after just a few weeks, there were still large puddles of water in the bottom of the tub. A closer investigation revealed that the motor had gotten so weak that it wasn’t actually moving the tub at all for the spin cycle: it was just making noise and pretending to work. We called our landlord, who called the repair people. They took a look, and found that the tub seal had broken and water had been seeping into the motor and the rest of the undercarriage: the motor bearing had rusted out and the resistance was just too much for it to overcome and drive the spin cycle. The estimated repair cost was over $400, and this is a washer that’s already had the tub seal repaired once before (the last tenant told us to keep an eye on it). At first, my landlord authorized the repairs, but I talked to her for a bit and suggested that just getting a new washer might be a better plan, and not too much more expensive. She agreed, and told me to basically pick one out and send her the bill. I went for a reasonable, middle-of-the-road Kenmore top-loader that’s also reasonably energy efficient (important since I pay the water and hydro!), it also happened to be on sale for $500 so it was pretty close to the repair cost for the old Crosley (a brand I’ve never heard of, but is supposedly manufactured by Maytag).

Sears delivered it within a few days, and the delivery went very quickly: the guys came in, took away the old washer, hauled the new one down the stairs, connected it and were gone in less than 10 minutes. However, our new washer was possessed. Not surprising, since the bill came to $666 after tax and delivery. During the spin cycle of the first load, it started violently shaking, attempting to walk its way across the room and possibly destroy itself in the process. The instructions said it was important to level it properly or “some vibrations” may be present. So, Wayfare and I spent nearly an hour carefully levelling the thing with no sucess (and many cuts on my hands in the process — they sure don’t sand/grind the sharp edges on the sheet metal around the bottom!).

Finally I gave up and said that there’s no way the washer can be that sensitive to being perfectly level, and called Sears to sort the mess out. They went through the troubleshooting guide with me: was the load uneven? (No, it was barely a load at all, just a few shirts and one pair of pants) Were all the shipping restraints removed? (I said yes, I specifically saw the guy pull the yellow zip tie out of the back that he said held the guts together). Was it level (oh, hell yes). Finally she said there might be something wrong with the washer and set up an appointment to send someone out to look at it next week. After I hung up I looked in the garbage to just double check that the guy got the ziptie out properly. The manual clearly showed a picture of a long tie with two cotter pins attached to it. In the trash was a short yellow tie, and no cotter pins. Cursing, I moved the washer out from the wall and looked in the hole in the back: sure enough, a ripped-off yellow zip tie was stuck in there. With a handy pair of pliers and many stabs at it, I finally managed to pull it out (with, what would you know, two cotter pins attached to it). It was at least twice as long as the piece in the garbage, and the washer worked fine after that. I was pretty pissed that the guys were in such a hurry to get in and get out that they didn’t check that the cotter pins actually came out with the zip tie when they yanked on it, or even that the zip tie was even approximately the right length (it looks like he tore off the third of it that was sticking out the back — there should have been a lot more zip tie, and I think he should have known that). Anyhow, that itself didn’t cause any permanent damage to the washer, though it is a bit of a piss-off since my landlord paid $85 for them to deliver and set up the washing machine. Unfortunately, I caused a bit of damage to the brand new washer when I tried to walk it back towards the wall: I pulled on the top instrument panel to get leverage, and rather badly bent the bit of sheet metal around the back of it. :(

Anyhow, I found out this morning that my grandmother passed away after having a bad stroke this weekend (she was in the hospital all week), so I’m leaving for PEI for the funeral. I’m holding up ok: everyone seemed to think this stroke was going to be the last, so we’ve had a bit of warning to prepare mentally.

Long after taxi companies in Vancouver and Victoria set mileage records with their Toyota Prius, Toronto finally has a few hybrid taxis.

I’ve long been a proponent of hybrid cars, and they are ideally suited to use as taxis (well, the ones that are big enough: the Civic and Insight are a bit small). Hybrids gain their biggest gain over conventional gas-only cars in stop-and-go city driving, which is where cabs spend most of their time. The ability to run the A/C and radio with the engine mostly off also helps reduce pollution coming from those trains of idling cabs outside subway stations. Also, as the article mentions, with the extreme number of miles that taxis accumulate hybrids pay for themselves a lot faster than other cars. While battery life is a common concern among potential buyers, it’s much less of an issue for taxis since they tend to go through cars in much shorter amounts of time, and battery degradation happens at least party due to time elapsed along with use (mileage/recharge cycles).

I know that you usually don’t get your choice of cabs when you call for one, but if I did I know I’d request the hybrid cab every time.

Now, if only we could get the message out to the other cabbies that while they use up their Taurus or Crown Vic before moving up to a hybrid, that driving around like total fucking idiots costs them more in gas, we’d all be better off.

Also, for Ontario Citizen’s: January 31 is the last day to get your comments in for the Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform! (Look for mine soon)

Canada Customs just phoned to let my mom know that her car was found on a container ship in Halifax. It’ll take some time to get it back here, but it’s good to hear! (Of course, it would have been better to find my brother’s car, since the insurance company was going to buy a brand-new one for my mom with her better coverage). Beyond that I don’t have any details — we don’t know if a large bust was made, or if my mom’s car was just lucky. We don’t know if there’s any damage to it (though if it’s on a container ship to be resold, they probably handled it gently).

Anyhow, I have to leave for my dentist appointment now — getting that tooth I cracked back in December fixed with a new crown :(

Also, I saw something I haven’t seen for a long time on the drive back last night: a guy talking (loudly) on his cell phone in the public washroom. (Then leaving without washing his hands because of course, he only had one free. Ick).

I was really getting into using Sunbird and Icalx to have a synched calendar at work and at home (two big paper ones always end up having things on just one or the other, and small paper ones go missing and can’t be pointed to when coworkers wonder where you are). However, sometime a few days ago Icalx.com has vanished from the tubeosphere, and hasn’t come back up yet. :(

It looks like I’m going to have to look into an alternate way to get this going, because I liked it. If anyone has any recommendations for a WebDAV server, I’d like to hear them, otherwise I may have to see how hard it is to install the WebDAV extensions on my own server…

Update: Hurray, it’s back up with no data loss!

The police called last night around 1 am, and of course it was the first time in a year when everyone was in bed early so no one answered. We just called back and they had a bit of good news for us: the GPS locator in my dad’s car worked and it has now been recovered! Unfortunately, the police computer system is currently down, so they can’t give us any details (arg!). We don’t know if the car’s been damaged, we don’t know if they recovered the other two along with it or not, we don’t know if this lead to a big bust with someone in the driver’s seat or a big warehouse full of stolen cars, or if the display said “tracking active” and they dumped it seperately. Actually, I think I’d like to make a hack for those multifunction displays in cars that comes up after say 5-10 minutes of driving with “recovery tracking active” just to see if it would foil some thieves…

At any rate, the police still have to do their forensics on the car, and then we’ll be able to pick it up later tonight or tomorrow morning. It’s a big relief for my dad, who wasn’t able to find the details of the insurance policy for that car, as it means he won’t have to worry about whether he was covered for the replacement cost, or just the depreciated value of it. My mom’s car we know is covered for full replacement (and even if not, it’s less than a year old so there’s been less depreciation).

Update: Just a bit more information: we know now that the car was recovered in 33 division and will be moved to 32 division for forensics (so it didn’t get too far away…)

Update 2: Well, there are fingerprints on the windows which we don’t think are ours, so the cops have taken those, and aside from the cash my dad keeps in his car, nothing seems to be missing. There is some damage to the centre console (likely trying to tear out the GPS), but we haven’t seen it yet. It has been confirmed that the Mercedes GPS tracking helped find it (dumped in a neighbourhood near Cummer & Bayview), so as much hassle as they gave us to start the track, it did actually work! They are at least partially forgiven for that…

And no sign of the other two cars :(