Somehow, our house knows when it is almost Thanksgiving. We figure that it thinks we’re going to be having a bunch of guests, and therefore causes something in the house to fail to give us tsuris. Typically, this is when it chooses to have the plumbing back up. But we’ve replaced the sewer lines, so it is forced to be more creative. Here’s how our house has been sabotaging us this November:
The Wall Oven
The previous owners of our house installed a GE Profile dual-oven (one convection) wall oven before we moved in. Even thought we are not hosting a large family dinner, on Monday the upper oven decided to stop working. We called in GE for repair, and the electronic board that controls that part of the oven is no longer available. The lower oven (non-convection) is still working.
This, of course, means that we will be looking for a new oven — an expense we hadn’t anticipated, coming just as we are about to start the paperwork to put in solar and re-roof (purchase, meaning a large loan). This is one where you bite the bullet and do it, because you have to.
Television
When we came home from a Bar Mitzvah in the Bay Area the weekend before last, we came to find our old DirecTivo was no longer working. It would start the boot up just fine, go to “Just a Few Minutes More….”, and then… snow, not even getting to satellite acquisition. Oddly, it still seemed to be recording and dialing out, even though it wasn’t talking to the TV (and, remember, it could talk to the TV during the beginning of the boot process). We were faced with the choice of at least a $150 repair, or just upgrading to a free Genie Whole-House DVR from DirecTV (although the latter would increase our bill by $13/month… the gift that keeps giving). We decided, as it was likely we lost all recorded programs, to bite the bullet and upgrade.
The first installer came out, looked at our three CRT TVs and our old amplifiers, and said that he needed additional parts. The appointment was rescheduled.
The rescheduled installer came out with the right adapters. He got all three TVs working with the new box. This led to a bit of a cascade issue: now that we had HD service to the boxes, we wanted to take advantage of it. One of our smaller TVs had a bad flyback transformer, making it impossible to watch. So we took advantage of a sale at Target (saving almost $100), and got a new 40″ LG HDTV. The 26″ that was displaced went to replace the 13″ squealing TV. I got everything rewired, and our system has been upgraded.
Computers
For the longest time, my wife has been using my daughter’s old Windows 7 laptop (the one she spilled pineapple juice on). It’s been mostly right after it was repaired, but occasionally the wireless or power is a bit flakey. She was going to switch to the smaller ASUS laptop that was running Windows 8.1 (upgraded to Windows 10), that my daughter gave up on after her boyfriend spilled water on it. We had gotten the motherboard cleaned, and it seemed to be running fine. Earlier this week, however, it just turned off. Only a flashing green power light, that when you try to power on just flashes faster. I think the power supply must have been damaged and finally gave up the ghost.
So, on top of everything, we’ll be looking for a new computer for my wife at the beginning of a new year.
