Modern repair...

Sometime during the past couple of renters, the door of the over-stove microwave was mis-handled, resulting in (ultimately) the plastic door frame cracking and the handle coming apart and detaching from the door. Since arriving for this most latest stay, we've learned to pull the door open by hooking a finger under the small piece of the top part of the handle that has remained in the door.

A couple of weeks ago, we responded favorably to an offer to rent the house, and that, naturally, triggered a search for a way to restore the microwave to a more conventional state of usability. The appliance repair stores I called were fairly uniform in their response, which was to spend money during a trip to the house to look at what had to be done, and to spend more money during a trip to perform the fix, plus the money required to buy the spare part.

Online, the best price I could find for the microwave's door was something like $125, to which I would have to add the cost of replacing the door. (Figure an hour of labor at a minimum, at $80 per hour.)

Then I ran across an online deal at Best Buy for the microwave model that replaces the appliance we had above the stove, for $199 plus tax. And if I didn't mind driving to Levittown, I could pay for it online and go pick it up!

Anyway, we did all that and waved aside the store's kind offer to come out and install the new microwave for us (for a flat fee of only $150). It turns out the old mounting frame (already installed on the wall behind the stove) fits perfectly, and the screw holes in the top of the unit are located in the same place as on the old unit.

Total labor for me, from carrying one box into the house to carrying the same box (with the old unit) into the basement was less than an hour.

A good day's work, on the Mr. Fix-it side.

* * *In other news, I declared yesterday a largely "computer-free day" (I think I had webster up and running, but I could not tell you what for (unless it was to tweak some C++ code for an app I wrote some time ago).

Apropos of old machines, I took apart the VAIO that was my work machine starting back at the end of 2000, and I was able to successfully remove the old hard drive. Someday, when I have more time, I will browse the contents to see if there are any nuggets hidden away.

Cheers...

He should count his blessings...

There's been some buzz online about what happened to a 26-year-old father of four in Waterloo, Ontario, when his four-year-old daughter drew a picture in her kindergarten class, of him using a gun to protect the family against "bad guys and monsters."

When he came to pick his kids up, you see, the man was arrested, charged with possession of a firearm, strip-searched, and jailed. His wife was interrogated, their house was searched, and the couple's children were seized by social workers.

The search of the house apparently uncovered a plastic toy gun that shoots foam darts. It would also appear that charges have been dropped and the family has been reunited. If authorities have said anything to the family, I'll wager it was probably some meaningless drivel about "just doing their job."

It occurs to me the fellow really ought to be thanking his lucky stars, because his daughter could have drawn a picture of her father hugging her.

Just think of the kind of trouble assiduous Waterloo bureaucrats and law enforcement officials could have have gotten him into if the child had drawn that!

UPDATE: In a follow-up television interview, the bureaucrat in charge at the Waterloo Region District School Board, one Gregg Bereznick, expressed satisfaction that—basically—the system worked the way it was supposed to in the course of "co-parenting" the child and working hand-in-hand with parents, blah-blah-blah. So in a way, I was wrong: officialdom's response was not meaningless drivel, it was insulting meaningless drivel that, further, claimed for the bureaucracy an exclusive and overarching authority over children that completely and unquestioningly takes precedence over parental authority.

Drowning in cassettes...

During the summer between high school and freshman year at the university, I recall waging a successful campaign to have a battery-operated cassette recorder included among the items for which my parents were prepared to shell out cash to further my education.

The argument supporting the purchase basically was this: with my recorder, I could tape lectures and then review them after returning to my room to study. This noble experiment lasted less than a month, as I ran up against the practical reality of taping lectures.

First was the cost associated with keeping a plentiful supply of batteries, or trying to position myself near an outlet in the cavernous freshman lecture halls so I could use the power supply.

Second was the rather poor quality of the sound captured while sitting in said halls.

Third was the need to stay particularly alert during lectures, so as to be able to lean over and note the reading of the tape counter (assuming I had been blessed with the foresight to set it to 000 before starting to record) any time something was said that was (or might be) worth reviewing later.

Fourth was the perceived need (or lack thereof) to actually review said lectures. Indiscriminately capturing 15 or so hours of taped lectures per week meant—if I were to diligently review what had been said—spending another 15 hours per week listening to recordings of generally poor sound quality. Chasing after important bits entailed about as much effort trying to find the corresponding important places on my tapes.

In my case with my freshman recorder, I was fairly lucky: it turned out that not much was said that I did not understand (except, perhaps, in freshman chemistry, but I don't believe anything would have saved me, there), so by the end of that first semester, I stopped recording my lectures completely.

The idea of taping proceedings for subsequent review persists, of course, and more successfully. Back around 2000, when I still worked at NASA's Johnson Space Center, I recall how Japanese delegations would unfailingly have one or two recorders going during meetings. It soon became clear—based on the nature of comments made and questions asked by delegation members on the following day—that significant effort had been spent listening to (and understanding) what was on those tapes between the time the meeting ended the day before and the time the meeting reconvened the following morning.

As it happens, the lure of the cassette recorder captured my mother's imagination, and over the years, she accumulated a small mountain of cassettes that captured all sorts of items: foreign language drills, her favorite radio programs, and even the occasional conversation with me (as I found out today, when I stumbled on a tape apparently made while we were driving along in a car, prior to one of my early trips to the Soviet Union).

I also found a tape I thought I had lost forever, of an interview I recorded in 1994, in Ligonier, Indiana (my father's home town), with a woman in her nineties who, back in the day, worked in my grandfather's house and knew my father, who was an adolescent half a dozen years or so her junior. That tape came about as a result of my attending the Sunday service at the Ligonier United Methodist Church, during which (as is the custom) visitors are asked to introduce themselves.

When my turn came, I did so and also announced my purpose in visiting the town, which was to learn what I could of my paternal ancestors. In addition to the one gentleman who took me home to meet and interview his grandmother, there was an older fellow there who buttonholed me and related a tale from his childhood.

One day in late autumn, while hunting squirrels on his way home from school, he was stopped by my grandfather, who was the town's doctor, and was instructed to shoot an additional three squirrels per week and deliver them to a certain family in town. As it happened, my grandfather was treating a sickly boy in that family, and he felt the extra meat would aid in the boy's recovery.

"What about the sheriff?" asked the boy. Apparently, while it was pretty commonplace for boys to show up at school with their rifles, which were collected by the teachers and then returned at the end of the school day, bagging more game than was allowed for by local regulations was a good way to get into trouble with the law.

"You leave the sheriff to me," said my grandfather, and apparently dropped a word or two where it mattered. Extra squirrels were shot and duly delivered, and the sick boy eventually got stronger.

So many cassettes!

Cheers...