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A few years ago I paid a maintenance guy 75 bucks to come out to my house and tell me that the reason the heat wasn’t running was due to a dirty flame sensor. He took the sensor out of the furnace, whipped it on his pants, and put it back in. The problem was solved.

I came home last night to a house freezing at 55 degrees. Our dogs weren’t very happy with me. From the sounds of the furnace I knew it was the same sensor problem. I cursed.

I had two options: call the guy again to have him come out, give me a dirty look, and wipe the sensor on his pants again or just do it myself. I chose the latter.

First off, the flame sensor is not an easy thing to get to. I had to remove a security faceplate, which by definition, is not something I felt qualified to do. Once the plate was moved I had to locate the little bugger. It’s a tiny stick about 2 inches long and the width of a toothpick. It’s also located behind the pilot light (which was off BTW) in a space that was just large enough to get my hand into.  After all the futzing to find it I took a pencil and used the eraser end to “clean” the sensor. I spent 10 minutes or so erasing what I thought was dirt of the sensor. I honestly couldn’t tell if I was actually removing dirt. It was still black when I gave up and put everything back together.

To my astonishment though, when the furnace fired back up the igniting problem had been solved. The furnace now started up in under 10 seconds. At the worst, the furnace would attempt to start for a minute, finally stop, and fall into failure mode.

So by cleaning off this magic toothpick my house is back to a balmy 70 degrees.

I honestly cannot remember when the toilet started running, but as of late it had become more than a drip or trickle. It had gotten so bad that we’d get up in the middle of the night to shut the bathroom door AND our bedroom door just to muffle the noise.

3 weeks ago I bought a “replace-everything” toilet flushing kit. Unknown to me at the time, I didn’t need to replace “everything” per-se, the bolts holding the tank to the bowl could have been saved. Regardless, since I had all new parts I spent Saturday morning fixing the toilet. After living with the a running water noise for so long, the lack of it is deafening. But it also feels like a bad itch has finally been scratched.

In other news, I have switched jobs once again. This time, though, I think I’ve hit on something good. I made the career switch to consulting vs permanent employment. I’m still salaried through a consulting firm, but now get to enjoy the luxury of zero emotional attachment to the work. I still really enjoy working with the technology and working on solving complex problems. With consulting comes the automatic respect and expectations of a job well done. I don’t feel like a drone so much.

The downside, working at a large corporate healthcare client has seriously cut into my online social life. No longer am I able to ping anyone via instant messaging. If I try to access any sort of IM on my work computer I’m kindly reminded via the proxy server that I am violating corporate policy and if I continue attempt to access IM it will be reported to my manager. Yet-another-reason I’m glad I’m not an employee.

Riles birthday party is fast approaching. With it comes the release of Guitar Hero III for the Wii. If I’m not reading about GH3, I’m telling Courtney about it. While Riley’s birthday party will be fun, I will also be enjoying a few competitive “battle of the bands” round against Drew and Chad.

A chat log:

Chad Angerer: and I have no idea how you can handle 3 dogs + child on a daily basis. We’ve had Lucy and Phoebe for the past two days and it’s like a zoo
Me: we pretty much separate the house into “zones”. only one entity is allowed in each zone at one time.
Me:except those with “zone admin” rights, being courtney and myself of course.

The short version of the Wii struggle is: I still don’t have one. There’s no need for me to bore you with the details. Let me just say that it’s been a very frustrating hunt this weekend.

Wednesday night I thought it would be great to wash Dottie’s dog bed. Over the past week she’s had some “issues” that had left her bed a little worse for wear. Her bed is so big, though, that it cannot all fit in the washer at once. I got a great idea to take the polyfill out of the bed and wash it separately from the cover.

An hour after the washer began I came down to a smoke filled laundry room. It seems that I had filled the washer too high with the polyfill and burnt out the washer engine. Wednesday night we went washer shopping.

This capped off a week (a short week nonetheless) of situations where Courtney had suggested that I not do what I was about to do. It started on Sunday when I was about to give Dottie some ibuprofen for her hip. Court said, “Are you sure that she is supposed to have that?” “Why not?” I said. One trip to the vet and $350 later I discovered Courtney was right, dogs aren’t supposed to have ibuprofen.

The ibuprofen caused Dottie to start having bladder and kidney problems. These problems caused her bed to be soaked in leaked pee. The soaked bed was the reason I was trying to wash the polyfill. Court asked me before I started dismantling Dottie’s bed so I could wash it, “Are you sure you should wash polyfill in the washer?” “Why not?” I said. One trip to the appliance store and $450 later I discovered Courtney was right.

So I vowed after this weekend to listen to Courtney more. She seems to have some good ideas, or at least cheaper ideas than I have.

We have 3 dogs. Well, technically 4 dogs (one is a foster from a rescue). Over the last 5 years they have made a mockery of my yard. Every year they tear up more and more of it. I’ve spent countless hours every spring trying my damndest to fertilize and cultivate a little bit of green in my back yard. This year I’m giving in. I’m finally ready to admit that I have no clue how to grow grass. I’ve called in the experts who assure me that my lawn will be lush and beautiful. I tried to warn them about the dog situation but they promised me with a little overseeding, love and care my lawn will be perfect. We’ll see about that around August.

Chad declared yesterday that I need to clean up L1R1, the affectionate name for my computer room. After thinking about it I thought, “How DARE he pass judgement on the cleanliness of my computer room! Who does he think he is?!” I realized that for as much grief and heckling I give to Chad, Tina, and their dog I shouldn’t react so harsh.

…I still plan on slashing his tires after lunch.

The handle broke on our dishwasher awhile back. A little 2 1/2-inch bar acts as an axis between the handle and the locking mechanism. broke into 2 pieces Its no real suprise that after many years of wear and tear this bar has given way. When the bar broke the first time we were lucky that the dishwasher was open. Without this tiny bar the handle becomes ineffective.

I’ve fixed the handle a few different ways. The first time I was able to find the bar pieces and glued the parts together. The second time I could only find half of the bar. Being a super genius, I glued a nail to the leftover half of the bar, figuring a nail would suffice.

This time the handle broke with the the door shut. Worse yet, the handle broke off stuck up inside the dishwasher. There are no screws to get into dishwasher from the outside. All the screws are on the inside of the door. I brainstormed a few ideas with some co-workers on how to get into the dishwasher. We came up with the following three fixes:

1. Sometimes dishwashers are just set in underneath the cabinet. Try pulling it out and hope there’s some way in.

2. Hope that the handle has fallen out of the dishwasher, leaving space to reach the locking mechanism with my fingers.

3. Open the front door with a sawsall.

For all of you hoping to hear a sawsall story, I’m sorry. I was actually able to get into the handle space and wiggle the lock open. But, you might ask, what did I do about the broken bar? The original bar was finally lost. It must have fallen out or something. I took the handle to Home Depot and was able to find a nail that would do the job handily. The smallest amount of nails I could buy though was a 1-pound box. So if this happens ever again, and chances are that it will, I have 999 backup replacement “bars” just in case.

In the early fall we had a minor mouse problem in our laundry room. Each morning we’d find a few “leftovers” from their feast the night before around the dog food bags. I tried a few different things to get rid of them. Sticky pads, mouse hotels.. But what really did the trick were the old fashion spring-loaded mouse traps.

Each night I would set out two traps smothered in peanut butter. For about a week I would wake up to 2 newly executed mice. One morning I came down to discover only one of the traps. I looked around figuring the poor guy must have hobbled off to die slowly with trap around his foot. I scoured the laundry room but never found the missing trap. I figured it would turn up at some point, right? I mean, how far can a mouse go with a trap around it’s foot?

Four months later, I was digging around my computer cords this weekend trying to troubleshoot a problem with my internet connection. I was blindly grabbing tangled cords from underneath my computer desk trying to figure out which power cord belonged to which device. As I was reaching I grabbed onto a wooden thing. Odd, I thought, I felt it a bit more. I thought to myslef, “Hey, that’s a mouse trap. I wonder what made me put one under my computer desk?” I grabbed it with my whole hand and started pulling it out. That’s when I realized there was a mouse still attached to it. He was good and dead. Real dead. I admit, I screamed like a little girl.

I feel bad for the critter. I mean, he managed to get this trap thing stuck to his tail. He did make it about 20 feet into the next room. I’m honestly surprised that done of the dogs tipped us off earlier about his whereabouts. Alas, he’s in a better place now, where he can eat all the dog food he wants.

Have you ever seen 5 cubic yards of river rock? My dad had the best guess/estimate of what it might look like: an 8 foot diameter, waist-high pile. That’s just about what it was too when they dropped it off Friday morning.

I started this yard project in the early summer, rock in everything the dogs had managed to trample, pound, and kill. I laid some edging from the back part of the garage around the entire back of the house. After spending three days installing the edging it took me another 2 months to actually get the rock.

But once I did, I went gangbusters. There’s nothing more satisfying than throwing rock on top of a down trodden mud pit. I spent two days playing with my new rock, throwing it anywhere and everywhere I could. I still have a waist high pile of rock, but now it’s only 4 feet in diameter. I’m pretty sure my neighbors think I’m nuts. I know the dogs do.

So that was my weekend, installing a new rockbed in my yard. Feel free to stop by any time soon and fling some rock yourself. I’ll be installing more until I’m blue in the face.

Speaking of music, have you read the story about the Grey Album? It’s a DJ mix of Jay-Z’s latest Black Album and the Beatles White Album. Sounds spiffy, eh? Well, once EMI, the owners of the White Album caught wind of the unique project they put the kibosh on the Grey Album release. Supposedly it’s floating around the internet’s nooks and crannies. I feel a hunt is on.

One day I will write a book about home servicemen repair. Or at least create a website for them.

Our fridge has been on the fritz for probably two months. We didn’t notice for a month because we didn’t have any food in it. We finally did start to wonder if something was wrong when our ice cream wouldn’t freeze. We tried cleaning out the coils, which did help a bit. But the fridge never really got as cold as it should. So what did I do? I called Sears.

30 seconds and 65 bucks later the guy tells me I need a new fridge. “Compressor’s shot,” is what he really said. He said this after taking 3 steps into my house. He did open up a back panel to give it a glance, but I think he did that to rationalize the tab he was about to stick me with.

The biggest pain about replacing our fridge will be finding one the exact size we need. When we moved in the fridge wasn’t under the cabinets like in most homes. It was off to the side of our kitchen counter, in an inconvienent place. We wanted to put it underneath our cabinet but it required us to shave part of our cabinets away. So now we have a very tight spot for a 66-inch by 29-inch refrigerator to fit. Anything larger just ain’t gonna work.