The $1.49, retrograde-Mercury dishwasher

OK: why a dishwasher? Because I grew up in America, where every kitchen has a dishwasher.

I didn’t have one when I lived in England, or Malta, or West Germany. We did buy one in Mexico, which never worked, an example of such excellent design that its criteria for determining when enough water had entered the device was not a float switch – silly thought! – but a timer. As in, the valve has been open for three minutes, therefore the machine has enough water to run. Never mind that our roof-tank water pressure was so low that it never filled in three minutes.

Oh well.

When we moved to Uruguay, there was a brief weekend where VAT (22%) was eliminated, so we hastily bought all our appliances at effectively an 18% discount, including a dishwasher. We didn’t of course, take time to learn that its shortest cycle was an hour and a half, and we basically used it as a drying rack, running the short pump cycle to clear out water. Then the control panel died. Being quite sure the manufacturer (James) would not have electronic replacements for a 15 year old machine, I tore into it, and with some remote Whatsapp guidance from an appliance repair guy, rewired the main on-off button to run just the drain pump. Problem solved! Except that a drying-rack dishwasher that never runs is a different beast than one run occasionally to help clean itself out. In a word, gross.

At this point we had only two of our original appliances still working: a washing machine and a vacuum cleaner, both Electrolux (our other James device, a clothes drier, also un-alived itself by control panel failure). So Electrolux it was for the new dishwasher, with a rapid cycle. Ordered before retrograde Mercury, it was delayed and arrived on June 29, my birthday and the start of retrograde Mercury. Arrived with significant dents, like it had been dropped.

If you know anything about retrograde Mercury, you’re now nodding slightly with a wry smile.

The eventual response was an offer to return my money, or give me a 30% discount. I chose the former. Later I realized the other option was stupid, since damage in transit is not covered by the manufacturer’s guarantee. So I got my money back. And the vendor said, no need to return the dishwasher; do with it what you will.

I hooked it up, repeatedly got a “water won’t heat” error, descended into the nine circles of Montevideo to Electrolux repair for an estimate they never produced – because they said it was working fine. Picked it up, installed it again, building a shelf because it’s smaller than the previous one, and yes, it is working.

The $1.49? Exchange rate difference between the original charge and the refund.

As with any appliance purchase, we ended up with an abundance of cardboard, wonderful for starting fires.

And yes, lavavajillas is the Spanish word for dishwasher.

Which means that detergente para lavavajillas should be just the ticket for the machine, right?

Wrong. It’s regular dish detergent, and leaves the dishwasher full of suds that take forever to go away.

I don’t have to tell you why I know this.

Dishwasher redux

Time to retire our dishwasher, rarely used, rusted, recently converted to one function. (But still needing cleaning and getting rather nasty inside.)

So of course it has to be torn apart in the spirit of inquisitiveness.

And it goes well, with the occasional sheet-metal flesh wound, until I get to the hose clamps, unlike anything I’ve seen before. I have no idea how they were attached, and can only remove them with great effort.

So imagine trying to remove all of them from the works on the bottom of the machine.

Logically determining that I had hit a point of diminishing returns, I called the project finished. Except, of course, for cleaning up the mess I created.

A *different* flight path

Around 8:00 AM yesterday, I heard a commercial jet, much louder than I’d ever heard. I went outside and spotted it flying at around 3,000 feet – less than half the altitude of normal outbound planes. More, it was heading at right angles to Europe-bound flights. In fact, towards Antarctica.

Then, seven or eight minutes later, another plane on the same path. And another.

Turns out it was the same plane (at 2,550 feet :).

It went over six times.

And then flew back to the airport.

Why? Presumably a bird strike shortly after takeoff. One engine flamed out, and the hour or so of flying overhead here was to burn off fuel so the plane could land safely.

More here: https://archive.is/PFmYw

Please tell them to stop.

We got a new “split” (AC/heating) unit installed yesterday. Like everything these days, it has an app. I can’t imagine what use that might be, especially since our wifi is turned on only sporadically (but enough times that I had to rig a replacement for its broken plastic switch cover). Seriously, an app? Is the remote control not enough?

Meanwhile, it has absolutely nothing to do with “artificial intelligence,” which I prefer to call automated ignorance.

Nothing. Please tell them to stop.