Home Again

Back home, from Indiana DC, and time to cut the grass.

Un-pissing off a friend-

So how do you un-piss off a friend that got so angry at you he storms out of a bar, screaming obscenities at you- after a night of bashing every other group out there. I don't know how to fix it.

Fixing the microwave

A few days ago the microwave broke. This isn't your normal broke- kick to the curb short circuit but instead a simple design flaw- the handle broke off. Given the relative strength of plastics I'm very surprised that such a thing could happen- that is, until I tried to line up the broken pieces and realized the bottom half of the two part handle was compressed very tightly- so that repeated cookings under the grill must have stressed it to the point it broke.

Googling "spacesaver GE microwave broken handle" returned millions of hits, all bitching about how expensive the replacement part was- 60$+, and that if you needed to replace the front half of the door (plastic holding in the glass) you were looking at nearly the cost of a new microwave.

Great Fix, GE- I'll contribute to the comments by saying your microwave design is a POS and that, with thousands of customers pissed off at your crappy design, you'd think you could come up with a better design. May I suggest

1) An addition screw access hole to the front of the microwave.
2) Anchoring the handle to the metal internal frame instead of the cheap plastic front
3) reducing the 2 piece handle to a 1 piece handle with
4) ribbed / textured grip underneath that can expand/contract better
5) picking a better plastic to use that is less sensitive to heat
6) swapping out the handle with metal.
I chose to take a piece of spalted maple I had planed in the garage back when I was tearing about wood pallets and feeding them into my thickness planar / jointer / table saw. I had a nice piece about the right thickness to take a screw and be strong, and if worse came to worse I could always put a finishing screw on the outside, go thru the metal frame and washer / lock washer / locktight / nut the inside. Either way it would look good, be functional, and I wouldn't have to buy another bloody damn microwave at this point.

And it won't be a GE either.

Baby Shower

Today is the baby shower- I'm staying as FAR AWAY as possible from my inlaws house. They've loaded up on presents and items and they're excited- so I'm here.

I figure there's enough work to do with house repair that I don't need to go there... and that means I can eat pork here too :)

Long Long Days

Home repairs haven't been happening and prep work for the baby's room has fallen very far behind due to a number of reasons, most of which have to do with my exhaustion.

My mother's cell phone died which she has chosen to not deal with in a constructive manner, especially with my grandfather's death. Bad times all around.

I also received a very weird call from work. A caller knew quite a bit about someone I know. Very scary.- Did I mention this wasn't on a public line?

Pork Smoking Goodness-

15 lbs of pork in the smoker... since 9am today... and I don't think it'll be done in time for dinner. The Travesty!

Kicked in the head!

Just because I was poking the belly some more, laughing at the baby... I put my ear down to see if she liked it or not... and then promptly got kicked in the head.

Good aim :)

More den work coming as I reorganize everything in the corner to make room for all the stuff out of the bedroom.... and get rid of dangerous open wires.

Yard Wise Exercise

Mowing the yard in the heat of the day wasn't the smartest thing... but it had to get done. Tired, sweaty, and sick feeling.