7-21
Just a quick note to let everyone
know that although I'm generally weak and can't do much other than
watch TV or play on the computer, I have a few appointments coming up
that may shed a bit more light on my situation. The situation now is
cautiously optimistic, but I'm still waiting for one more doctor to
give me his evaluation before I start to breathe easier.
Now if everybody's ready let's get
on to an old fashioned rant.
Last week our refrigerator decided
to do it's every other yearly thing of freezing up. The only cure for
this is to unplug it for a day or two to let it thaw out. Your only
warning for this is that the temperature readouts on the front start
reading temps that are nowhere near right. I don't know what braniac
engineer decided that the fridge side of the unit needed a defroster
to make it work right, but I would like to sentence him to 5 years of
replacing the heater units in every one he/she designed. Normally I
don't get all PC with the he/she thing but I wanted to make sure I
included every one of the possible braniacs that may have had some
input on fridge design. This particular unit is a Samsung and when we
got it we were assured that with a six year warranty that it was of
very high quality and we would get many years of service out of it,
which I was very glad to hear at $ 1400.00. Yep, we got 6 years
and a month before we had to call the Geek Squad to fix it. The first
thing he told us was we were probably running it too cold. It has a
temperature readout on the front of it and we had the freezer set at
-10 degrees and the fridge set at 36. Of course he also said that the
heater on the fridge side had to be replaced and would take a week
for the part to get in. In the meantime he defrosted the fridge side
and said it would be fine until he could get back with the part. He
said what caused the problem was opening and closing the fridge door
allowing moisture in and then to freeze. Back to the design engineer,
uh were y'all not aware that we were going to have to open the door a
couple of times a day ??? And we don't even have kids at home anymore
to leave the door open for 30 minutes at a time. I realize that it's
kind of high tech to be able to set your temps on the fridge, but the
fridge side IS NEVER MEANT TO FREEZE. So tell me oh brainy one why
does it do it and why can't you figure out how to prevent that ??? At
a cost of over $200.00 to have a tech come out and defrost the damned
thing every two years it gets old kind of quick. The repair process
calls for emptying out the fridge completely, taking all of the
shelves out, and then dismantling the air handler at the back of the
fridge. This involves taking out about a dozen screws and using a
steamer or a hair dryer to thaw out the air handler enough to get it
apart to be able to finish thawing it out. This whole thing takes
about two hours and another 45 minutes to put it back together.
Replacing the heater takes about 5 minutes after its all apart and
thawed. The only other option is the afore mentioned unplugging since
the brainy ones also forgot to put an on/off switch in it. I remember
all too well having to defrost the Kelvinator that I grew up with.
Funny thing though it was always the freezer.
Now with all of this being said,
Teresa decided she had had enough of this and went to find another
one. After we had gone to 3 places she had worn me out so a friend of
hers took my place and off to Ft. Worth they went to find one. A
couple of hours later a phone call said they had indeed found the
perfect one but it wouldn't fit in the friends Tahoe. It was decided
we would pick it up the next day in my pickup. It had to lay down due
to the camper shell I have and had about 2 inches to spare. That was
the easy part. When we got it home a friend came over to help get it
in the house. After taking off the door to the fridge, the door to
the house, and rearranging the living room furniture we finally got
it in. Evidently another engineer figured out that if he made the
thing a half inch bigger it would require you to disassemble your
house to get it in. I imagine them sitting at a screen much like the
one on NCIS in the MTAC room where they are watching by satellite
someone try desparately to get one in their house while one of the
helpers goes to fetch a chainsaw to make the door big enough to get
it in. But after much groaning and grunting and more than a little
swearing it was in the house and many hours later it was cooling,
loaded, and in place with the water line hooked up and all. It has a
lot of pretty lights inside and one to show you when you didn't leave
the glass under the ice dispenser long enough so you can see the last
ice cube go shooting across the floor.
Engineers have long been overlooked
as someone to throw rotten tomatoes at. I think it's because as we
grew up we heard the name engineer and immediately thought of the
train engineer. And a lot of boys had dreams of becoming one some
day. But these are not the types of engineer that I have a problem
with. The type I'm talking about is the one that designs a Kia that
has to have the top end of the engine taken apart to change the spark
plugs. What, you say, surely I'm exagerating. Nope, a Kia Sorento
requires that you take off the intake manifold to change the plugs
introducing a whole other level of possible problems. I'm sure that
the original idea was to make sure you took your vehicle back to the
dealer since no one in their right mind would tackle that under their
own little shade tree. Or how about a Chrysler product ( and here I
must apologize as it's been over 14 years since I saw it and I don't
remember the exact model ) that requires you to pull the engine to
change the starter. It was a front wheel drive car, but the engine
was mounted in such a way so as to make it impossible to work on
without pulling the engine.
These are the types of engineers I'm
talking about. These people should be watched from an early age and
when an instructor sees this type of behavior a note should be made
somewhere that will follow them through their education and on into
their career. These notes individually wouldn't mean much, but as
they added up over time one could see where it would be headed and
the person could be warned. Warned of what ? Warned that if they
continued to put out designs that required ridiculous amounts of
labor to fix a problem that would inevitably come that they would
have to be sterilized to prevent future generations of braniacs. Of
course this could never happen but I can dream.
No comments:
Post a Comment