Death to Whirlpool, Part 3

January 15, 2013

Whirlpool Customer Service
553 Benson Road
Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Dear Person,

I am unhappy with the Whirlpool Gas Water Heater I bought a couple of years ago. I bought it to replace the A.O. Smith brand gas water heater that was installed in the house when we had it built 15 years earlier.

The old water heater was conventional in all respects, it had no electronic controls of any kind. It may not have been the most efficient, but it was reliable. It never failed to supply hot water. Even when it was on its’ last legs, leaking water all over the garage floor, it was still providing hot water.

I cannot say the same for my new, fancy, Whirlpool water heater with the electronic controls. Two, maybe three years old, and the electronic controller gives up the ghost. Two weeks later the water heater  flames out again. This is disappointing, to say the least.

I chose this particular model because it seemed like a good compromise between expected life time (estimated from the warranty) and price. I did not like the fact that it had an electronic controller, but it seemed that all of the gas water heaters available at Lowes had some kind of electronic controller. Lowes and Whirlpool seemed like good brand names, so I took a chance.

As I see the situation, there are three distinct problems here:

1. Poor response to customer complaints.
2. Failure to follow up on controller failures.
3. Bad choice of connectors in implementing the design.

When I called the first time you were closed. When I called the second time I was on hold for a very long time. This tells me you were very busy, which means either that you are scrimping on customer service, or you are getting way more calls than you expected. As it was, my water heater failed on Friday and I did not get the replacement controller till Wednesday. A better response would have been “for $100 we can have that controller replaced before midnight”.

You sent me a new controller without asking for the old one back. This tells me that either

• you don’t care why it failed, or
• you have already examined enough failed controllers to know what the problem is, or
• this is such a rare occurrence that it is statistically insignificant.

I’m thinking you already know what the problem is. The question then becomes why haven’t you done anything about it?

When my water heater flamed out a second time, you sent me a replacement sensor. Since unplugging and reconnecting the sensor was all that was required to get it running this time, I suspect that the problem was a tiny bit of corrosion on the contacts. Plug in connectors are fine for quick assembly, but if you are going that route perhaps you should have taken a lesson from the computer industry and used gold plated connectors. If using gold causes you grief, perhaps you should use a more positive method of connecting the sensors to the controller, like screws.

To correct this problem with the connectors, I suggest you spend a little time and money on R & D and develop a replacement connector that will not suffer from loss of contact due to corrosion.

The sensor replacement kit you sent me contains two instant connectors. I did not install it because it looks to me like installing it would simply introduce four new points of possible failure (two wires contacting a clip in each of two connectors).

Sincerely,

Charles Pergiel

Whirpool Gas Water Heater particulars:
Model Number: SG1J5040T3NOV
Previous posts on this subject here and here.

Death to Whirlpool, Part 2

Water Heater Controller

For the second time in two days my older son has fixed broken appliances just by looking at them. Glory Be His Name! The new controller for the water heater was supposed to arrive yesterday. I spent all day waiting for it so naturally it didn't show. I finally gave up and decided to tackle the screaming fireplace fan. It shouldn't be too difficult, just a matter of pulling it out, cleaning it up, oiling the bearings, and stuffing it back in its hole. Get it out and spin the fan and there's no squeak. Okay, maybe it only happens when it's hot and when it's running full speed. Pull the motor loose and give it a spin by turning the nylon coupler on the end of the shaft. Squeak! Aha! Found the culprit. Pull the little nylon do-jobbie off the end of the shaft and examine it. The shaft has a half flat on the end that matches a half-flat hole in the nylon coupler. There is no way that thing could slip. We fool with it and fool with it and we aren't getting anywhere until older son finally notices that when he spins the shaft directly, that is, without the nylon coupler on the end, the motor still squeaks.What the deuce? The armature in the motor is not turning! Double aha! Take the motor apart and the shaft slides right out the armature.
    Wait a minute, haven't I been hear before? Yes I have. I have epoxy on hand, so I mix up a little dab, slather it on the shaft, slide the shaft back into the armature, and drive the tip of a toothpick into the little hole I made last time I was here. I thought about about cutting a piece of paper clip, but my fuse was a little short. The epoxy alone worked for six years. Maybe the toothpick will extend that a bit. I fired up the fan this morning and so far it is spinning happily, i.e. quietly.
    This morning the new controller for the water heater arrived and I set about installing it. I have a little trouble locating the necessary tools, but other than that everything went fine. (I still haven't found the big wrench I was using yesterday on the fireplace. Where could it have gone? Gremlins, I tell you!) Anyway, got the old one out, got the new one in and got it all hooked up, and now all we have to do it press the GO buttom. I press the go button and nothing happens. I take a break and come back a little later and try again. Still no go. Stomp off. When I got this heater two or three years ago, I had a little trouble lighting it. I called Whirlpool and the very nice lady told me the secret which was that you had to hold down one of the buttons for a longish time in order to get the gizmo to fire up, but that was years ago. Which button was it? Maybe Whirlpool can tell me. Call Whirlpool. They want my serial number, which is okay I guess, but then they want to verify my name and address. What? Why? I hang up, I've had enough of this phone call protocol. A little while later older son stops by to see how I'm doing. We go out to the garage and I am about to give him a rundown on the action so far when I notice the little blinky light on the controller is blinking! Hallelujah! It is working! I turn the knob to ON and we hear the wonderful roar of the main burner lighting off. So older son fixed it just by showing up. Weird thing is that I could not see the pilot light through the little window. I could turn the main burner off and check again, but after five days without hot water I am loath to touch that dial.

This 50 gallon water heater heater is rated at 40,000 BTU's (British Thermal Units). One BTU can heat one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. "A pint's a pound the world around", so 50 gallons weighs 400 pounds. We want to raise temperature 100 degrees, from 50 to 150. 100 degrees times 400 pounds is 40,000 BTU's. Okay, this all kind of fits together, but how long is it going to take to heat that 50 gallons? Hmmm. BTU doesn't tell you that, but eHow does:

Significance

• A water heater is ranked by BTU input, but really means BTUs/hr; thus a 33,000 BTU heater can heat 33,000 pounds of water by one degree in an hour; or, 330 pounds by 100 degrees.

Update: Two hot showers in two days! Paradise, I tell you. I went back to look at the pilot light after it finished heating its first tank of hot water (took an hour and a half). Being as it is a new fangled, electronically controlled gizmo, you can't see into the burner area directly. There's a little window you can peer through. When the burner was on I could see the flame easily, but now the main burner is off. Only the pilot light should be on. I look in the window and I see nothing. What the devil? I look a little closer, I look to the right, and then I look to the left, and aha! There's the little devil. Confounded designers, they need to have their hands slapped.

Update July 2019 replaced image that disappeared when Blogger 'fixed' some bad html.

Death To Whirlpool

I just found out that our water heater has flamed out. Three years old, maybe, and the electronic box has flaked out. It is just after 7PM West Coast time and all the little Whirlpool people have gone home for the day. This would be the time to call my local plumber, but I expect an emergency call on Friday night would cost as much as new heater. My old mechanical, inefficient, el-cheapo water heater didn't give me any trouble for fifteen years, until it sprung a leak, and even then it was still delivering hot water. The car people seem to have figured out how to make electronics reliable. How much longer before the water people figure it out?

Dishwasher

Our dishwasher started making stinky smells, stinky like in burning electrical insulation. Well, this can't be good. It could be that some electrical component had failed and replacing the offending part may fix it. Or it could be that some other component, like the motor, has developed a problem that caused the suspect component to fail, in which case we won't really have fixed the problem and it will recur in short order. So if the motor is suspect, then we could replace the motor, but the motor for this 25 year old dishwasher runs $450. Okay, we're not going to do that.

Frigidaire Gallery Dishwasher

Thursday we made a return trip to Hutchins TV & Appliance and picked out a new dishwasher. Yesterday a couple of guys (Jerrod and Michael) from Portland Installation came by and swapped out the old one for the new. Dishwasher was $640, installation was $140.

First priority with my wife was that the new dishwasher should match the refrigerator we bought a couple of months ago. Friends of ours bought a Miele dishwasher because it's the 'best', and the price shows it: $1,500. No thanks, I don't need some overpriced, over-gadget-ified European fashion piece. Plain old 'merican fashion is good enough for me.

I do like the handle on the Frigidaire, it's just a very smooth curve. Some appliances these days go for the industrial style with big squarish brackets holding the handles. Cool until you run into one with your hip.

Style seems to be about the only feature that is different on the dozen or so dishwashers Hutchins had on display, which shouldn't be too surprising since most of them are all made by the same company. Our old Kitchen-Aid dishwasher was made by Hobart, the commercial food equipment company. They got out of the consumer end of the business a few years ago. Now Kitchen-Aid, Kenmore, Whirlpool, Jenn-Air, Maytag and IKEA are all made by Whirlpool.

Jerrod gave me a brief overview of the features and controls. Because it's new and modern, the dishwasher has a little display (the green number 30 in the picture above), that shows things like status messages and how much time is left on this wash cycle. Normal wash cycle now runs for over three hours! I don't think our old one ran for more than an hour, but then I never timed it. It might have run for six hours, but I kind of doubt it. I think I probably would have noticed if it was running all frigging day long. Jerrod tells me that dishwashers now have a soak phase. They spray the dishes with water and then just let them soak for a while to loosen any crusty bits. I suppose this is in the name of energy efficiency, and I guess that's okay.

Once we open it up and start loading it we notice a couple of things that we might should have noticed in the store, not that it would have made any difference, since all the machines seem be made in the same pattern, even the Miele.  The door is taller, so when it is open it sticks out farther into the room, which means it blocks the aisle more than the old one did. The door is taller because the tub is larger, which means the lower rack is lower which means you have to bend over farther to reach it. The racks seem flimsier, but plastics have improved in the last 25 years, so maybe they will be okay. Now that I think about it, maybe taller is better. Loading dinner plates AND tall glasses in the old machine required a certain amount juggling to get everything to fit and let the upper spray arm spin freely.

We are planning on remodeling our kitchen sometime in the near future. The biggest problem is that the cheap lacquer finish on the cabinets absorbs water, so everywhere that people have regularly touched the cabinet doors, the finish has turned into a kind of gray goop. Refinishing would solve that problem, but we've been here 25 years and my wife wants a new kitchen. I mean, all her friends have new kitchens and she's feeling a little pressure.

If we go ahead with remodeling the kitchen, I am thinking we need to raise the dishwasher by about a foot., just to make access easier. Unfortunarely, we would then lose two feet of counter space. The space under the microwave is kind of cramped, so could combine the two appliances into one stack so we wouldn't be losing any prime counter space, but the dishwasher really needs to be near the sink, so we are going to be interrupting the counter. Bah. Maybe we need an elevator for the dishwasher so we could raise to a convenient height for loading and unloading and lower it when we need the counter space. Gah, that sounds like a Japanese solution. This is America, why don't I have enough counter space in my kitchen?

P.S. After we bought our refrigerator, we stopped by Lowe's for something and since refrigerators were on our mind, we took a look at what was on offer. Geez, they must have had a zillion. Made me glad we went to Hutchins. Too much freedom of choice can be overwhelming. The selection at Hutchins was entirely adequate for my purposes and it freed me from too much freedom.


Devo - Freedom Of Choice DEVO's Freedom of Choice (link goes to original, un-embeddable, video) mentions

In ancient Rome
There was a poem
About a dog
Who found two bones
He picked at one
He licked the other
He went in circles
He dropped dead

So what was the poem?  A post on StriaghtDope points us to Burdian's Ass.

Water Heater Problems

Talking to people at a neighborhood barbeque a couple of weeks ago and the subject of rent control comes up, not too surprising since some of the folks are landlords of one sort or another. They might own a couple of houses or a duplex or some such. I've known several people who have gotten into this and they all claim it is good way to make money. I never thought it was worth the hassle. Just tending to my own house is a real pain in the tukas.

Right now I am trying to figure out what to do about the my stupid water heater. The water heater that came with house lasted for like 25 years before it sprung a leak and had to be replaced. I did it my self, it's not terribly difficult. Once you drain the water out they are like an empty beer can. There are three pipes (hot water, cold water and the gas line) and the exhaust flue to connect and you are ready to go. Problems started showing up shortly thereafter and intermittently ever since. The old water heater was totally mechanical. The new one has a thin film of electronics applied over the mechanics and this is where the problem arises. Every once in a while, the tiny electronic brain would decide that one of the sensors was not operating properly and it would shut off the gas, the water would go cold and I when I discovered this betrayal I would fly into a rage. Turn the dial on the control box to Off and then wait a few minutes for the thermocouple to cool down and stop producing energetic electrons. When everything has died down, you can relight the pilot and you are back in business. So what's wrong with the sensor? Who knows? The thing will run for another year or so before it flames out again.

If there really was a problem with the sensor, the water heater should not have continued to run after being restarted. I suspect there is some electrical connection, somewhere in this black box, that is weak and whenever the temperature makes a big change, the contraction of the metal bits means it loses contact and the heater loses its mind. But why does it start up again when I relight the pilot? Was my body radiating enough warmth to cause the metal to expand and reconnect? Or was it just my aura having a psychic effect on the electrons in the immediate area?

Now it's developed a new problem: the controller just shuts down, no flashing trouble codes, the status LED just goes black. Restarting it has gotten to be more difficult and has to be done several times a week. I thought about calling Whirlpool, but I've never gotten any satisfaction from them before, and I would liable to start screaming at whatever unfortunate happens to answer the phone, and that's not going to do anyone any good. I could order a new controller and sensors and replace the ones I have, but how do I know these are going to be any better? I think I'm going to go talk to George Morlan, the Water Heater King, see if he has any advice on the subject. He'll probably want to sell me a new water heater. As long as it's not a Whirlpool, I'll probably buy it.

Refrigerator

My custom refrigerator dust getter. Made by taping a short piece of aquarium tubing to the end of a standard vacuum cleaner crevice tool. I used electrical tape to connect the two.

Our 25 year old refrigerator has given up the ghost. It's been leaking water, off and on, little drips and drabs for a month now. And a couple of weeks ago the freezer quit freezing. Yesterday I finally got a round toit and cleaned out the dust from the evaporator coils on the under side of the fridge. It was bad, I hadn't bothered to give it a thorough cleaning since we bought it. How can you tell anyway? Everything is painted black, and it's dark underneath there. I spent a couple of hours vacuuming, blowing dust with the air compressor, mopping up the mess the compressed air made and then doing it all over again. I even made a special tool to get through the outer grill of wires and tubes. I got a heck of a lot of dust out of there, and spread dust all over the downstairs. Put it back together, plugged it in and let it run for 12 hours. I felt for sure that getting the dust out would cure it, but such was not the case.

Our new fridge, a Frigidaire Gallery 22.6 Cu. Ft. French Door Counter-Depth Refrigerator DGHF2360PF

It used to be that in a such a case I would redouble my efforts until I had completely disassembled the fridge and rebuilt it to my exacting standards. Only then, when it still failed to freeze would I have  considered throwing in the towel. Maybe I have gained a little wisdom is my old age, or maybe I have just learned to listen to my wife, or maybe that is the same thing.

So we went to Hutchins TV & Appliance this afternoon and bought a new one. I find appliance stores are good for us because they have salesmen on hand who are willing to talk about their products. I don't care much for such conversations, I prefer a spreadsheet with the facts, but my wife is more verbal and she likes to talk about these things, and salesmen are perfectly happy to do that. Besides her concerns are different than mine. For example, at first she wanted black stainless steel, but defiant daughter talked her out that, for which I am glad. I suspect this 'black stainless' is fad that will last a couple of years until some really ugly examples start showing up. Might not be anything wrong with the finish, but it is new, and special, not 'standard', and therefor suspect.

Interesting thing about stainless refrigerators: stainless steel is not magnetic, so your cute little refrigerator magnets will not stick to the refrigerator door as they have been doing since time immemorial. Horrors! This cannot be! Well it is, and it isn't. Different manufacturers have taken different approaches to the problem. Frigidaire has backed their stainless steel skins with a sheet of regular steel, so the magnets still stick. Whirlpool (or is it GE?) concocted a special blend of stainless steel that is magnetic, so the magnets still stick. GE (or is it Whirlpool?) said phooey on this whole magnet business, we are the future after all, and integrated a touch screen into the door.

Poking around for an explanation, I found this:

Austenitic stainless steels (such as a typical 300 series) are non-magnetic, whereas martensitic stainless steels (such as a typical 400 series) are magnetic. - Brian Barnhart

Rumor has it that when consumer appliances with stainless steel skins first started to appear, they were prone to smudging, but now we have smudge resistant finishes. I wonder just what the heck they are doing to make them smudge resistant, and how thick is the stainless steel skin on Frigidaire refrigerator? I suspect it may be only a few thousandths of an inch thick, kind of like aluminum foil.

There is also a problem with ice dispensers in these 'portal' refrigerators. The top portion of the refrigerator is refrigerated, not frozen, but the ice dispenser is up there as well. How do you deal with this? You install a minature freezer inside the fridge. Some companies put them in the door, which limits their ice capacity. In our fridge, the ice maker and ice storage are in a box hanging from the inside top.

Efing Whirlpool

Water heater flamed out again this morning. Fine, time to see if Whirlpool has a solution for this problem that has been going on for years. Call customer service and the first thing Robo-cop wants me to do is tell them my phone number. WTF? Everybody and their dog all over the world has caller ID and these clowns can't figure out what my phone number is? This isn't good. I get to a person in short order, who transfers me to 'water heater technical support' where I get to listen to some horribly distorted muzak. Why do they do that? Is it because they are too cheap to buy a decent radio? Or is it a deliberate attempt to drive people away?

Whatever. After a few minutes Robo-cop comes back on the line and asks if I would like to have them call me back instead of just waiting. Sure, that would put a stop to the noise coming out of my phone. And hey, it appears Robo-cop knows my phone number after all. Bozos.

A few minutes later I get a call back and the operator starts interrogating me: name, rank, serial number, address, blah, blah. I answer her first couple of questions, but then I tell her no more, I want to talk about the water heater. We exchange a bit more and then it becomes apparent that they still don't have a solution for this problem. Call me when you have one.

I suspect there is a 'weak' electrical connection somewhere between the controller and the sensor and any little change in temperature causes the connection to fail which causes the controller to flag the sensor as bad. Then I come out and glare at it, and the connector contracts in fright, contact is restored and the water heater lights up again.

I could be wrong about all this, but I can't imagine what else could be causing these intermittent failures. I suppose it's time to get out the soldering iron and make some new connections.

Iron Gates

I'm reading Blood of Victory by Alan Furst. On page 168 he mentions the Dezvrin Ship Canal on the Danube River, built to bypass the Iron Gates. I go looking for this canal, but Google has never heard of Dezvrin. A little more searching turns up several pages that mention this canal.

"special undertaking" - Zorica Janković:

SIPS CANAL : Four decades earlier, all the world's press brought the news that on Sunday, September 27, 1896, three sovereigns of the neighboring states, the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Francis Joseph, the Romanian King Carol I and the Serbian King Aleksandar Obrenović, ceremonially opened the Danube Sip Canal in the Iron Gate area. With the thunder of cannons and the applause of those present, the steamship "Franz Joseph I" (with three sovereigns on board) passed through the canal first, cutting the flower ribbon that was strung across the canal exactly at 10 o'clock. Its passage ended the dangerous passage of vessels through the Djerdap gorge, which until then had been done with great effort, avoiding underwater rocks and eddies, by experienced Danube oarsmen, called locs (the name Djerdap comes from the Persian word girdab and the Turkish girdap, which means whirlpool, whirlpool or rapid). On the same day, on the occasion of the opening of the canal, the three sovereigns received congratulations from the Pope of Rome, the German and Russian emperors, and the Italian king.

To regulate the large river, seven canals with a total length of 16.9 km were cut along the bank, the largest of which was Sipski (named after the nearby village), 2,133 m long, 73 m wide and 3.9 m deep, cut along the right bank of the river. Over time, the ships, for upstream navigation through this channel, will receive an additional cable traction, driven first by a powerful tugboat (1899), and then by a locomotive (1916), which moved on rails on the coastal embankment.

After WW1, the ships were towed upstream through the Sip Canal with the help of the locomotive. This practice continued up to 1969 when the Canal was flooded in course of construction of the hydroelectric power plants Iron Gates 1 and 2. Afterwards, the towing was no more needed. - Igor Bačkalov

Iron Gates Museum: 

The Iron Gates is the traditional name for the gorge by which the River Danube passes through the Transylvania Alps, where it now forms the boundary between Romania and Serbia. The ‘cataract region’ extends from Moldova Island, 130 km downstream from Belgrade, for 120 km. Over that distance the natural fall of the river is 30 m, and in places its width contracts from 2 km to less than 100m, while the highest cliffs rise 683 f from the surface. A towing path, partly cut from the rocks and partly cantilevered on wooden beams was cut through the gorge by the Emperor Trajan and his successors between AD28 and 102. The first steamship passed through the Iron Gates in 1834.

From 1878 the river navigation was improved by the Hungarian government under the supervision of the International Danube Commission. A 2.5 km canal with a fall of 3.7 m was built on the southern side of the river in 1895-98, with a railway track alongside. The haulage upstream of heavy barges by steam locomotives being driven at maximum power was spectacular.

After the Second World War the governments of Romania and what was then Yugoslavia built a hydro-electric dam at the Iron Gates with pairs of locks on either side. The scheme was completed in 1972 and the passage of boats along the river is quieter than in the days of steam locomotive haulage.

Second Separate Pontoon Bridge Regiment:

The history of the river and of the communities on its banks is illustrated in the regional museum at Drobeta Jurnu-Severin.The holiday was celebrated on November 7, 1944 by the sixth company on the Danube River raid in the Bulgarian city of Rusa. The march of the company and the battalion in tow to the "Iron Gate" roll was normal. At one time, a channel with a length of 1600 meters and a width of 30-35 meters was built on the right bank of this river for the ships going up the Danube River. The flow velocity in the channel reached 30 meters per second. A railway track was laid along the mainland shore of the channel, along which a steam locomotive plied, designed to tow ships along the channel. The convoy of the sixth company was divided in half, i.e. three ferries, a tow rope from the locomotive was put in tow - and safely passed the channel. But when leaving the canal, when the tow rope was given, one diesel engine on the “Zhiul” stalled, and the whole convoy was pulled back into the channel, which threatened a big accident. The emergency situation was saved by the team servicing the channel. The cable was again put in tow and the locomotive held the convoy in the channel until the launch of the second diesel engine in tow. The second part of the convoy was pulled through the roll by another, more powerful tug of 2,400 horsepower, which carried the remaining ferries. The “Iron Gate” is a very artful  rolling. There due to the confusion of the helmsman, even the armored boat of the Danube flotilla was sunk. The same fate during the passage of one of the companies of the 1st battalion befell a hydroplane with the personal belongings of Battalion Commander Major Falin.

ICON OF IDENTITY: THE ILE DE FRANCE ON THE WORLD STAGE - Christian Roden

Joining two friends in Vienna, Ted ventured on a Danube River journey aboard the Russian riverboat AMUR, built by the Austrians as war reparations, while watching a variety of river traffic including vintage sidewheel towboats and ferries. A highlight of the river trip was his experience at the Iron Gate, a powerful and dangerous stretch of the Danube where steam engines had to tow the riverboats upstream for a few miles due to the treacherous currents. Ted pointed out that the Orient Line’s ORSOVA was named after the town where the Iron Gate is located and included a stylized Iron Gate as part of her bow decoration. All Orient Line ship names started with OR.

The Odyssey - Hollywood Theater

The Odyssey | Official Trailer
Universal Pictures

I give it three stars. The first hour was drivel, people whining about life. The dialog was crap.

After that, things picked up. Odysseus and his crew have a series of unfortunate encounters with a succession of vicious beasts and people. At every encounter Odysseus loses some men.

The wooden horse that the Greeks built was very impressive, but leaving it on the beach doesn't seem like a good idea. Seems more likely that the Trojans would just burn in in place. The scene with dozen or two of men packed inside this horse for some number of days was well done. But not too well done, we don't want to hear about all the shit accumulating in the bottom of the horse. Couldn't the Trojans have smelt it?

The cyclops was impressively grotesque. Circe was very talented and very nasty.

I don't ever recall hearing about ten foot tall armored soldiers in The Odyssey. Did the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica wander onto the wrong set?

There was one scene where something big was reaching down from somewhere above the ship and grabbing men from the boat. It eventually retreated into a cave high in a cliff overlooking the water. We never had a clear view of what it was.

Scylla and Charybdis were mythical sea monsters noted by Homer; Greek mythology sited them on opposite sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Calabria, on the Italian mainland.

The scene with the whirlpool was weak. 

The scene at the end where Odysseus takes on the courtyard full of courtiers looked like every action movie I've ever scene. Is he really going to kill 200 men all by his lonesome?

Notes:

• Agamemnon murdered by Clytemnestra, his wife and Helen of Troy's half-sister.
• Homer never mentioned the "Sea Peoples" in the Odyssey.
• Homer composed the Illiad (part 1 of this saga) and the Odyssey (part 2) around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.
• Ulysses is the Latin version of Odysseus.

House of Cards

A miner using a hydraulic jet to mine for gold in California, from The Century Magazine January 1883

I'm a little concerned about the value of money. Congress just borrowed another two or three trillion dollars to help us get out of the hole that the panic-inducing media have dumped us in, and that's on top of the twenty odd trillion we have already borrowed. Then we have smaller stories like venture capitalists trying to create industries out of nothing by pouring money down the drain. Maybe they are hoping the whirlpool effect will somehow uncover a hidden gem. Kind of like gold miners. People used to pan for gold using a pan and a handful of paydirt. Then someone came up with the idea of hydraulic mining where they would use fire hoses to wash away mountains to uncover the mother lode.

And then there is the airliner business. Used to be that companies built airplanes and sold them to people who ran airlines, but then the business got big and weird. A few years ago Rolls-Royce had a billion dollar backlog of orders for their giant fan-jet engines. A year later they were in trouble because their customers found they could get the required maintenance done elsewhere at a much lower cost. If you thought Rolls-Royce was in the business of making and selling engines, you'd be wrong. That whole business was a just a marketing ploy to sell overpriced maintenance contracts. People are so stupid.

Then we have the Boeing 737-Max disaster. Some people blame the cut-throat business people from McDonnell-Douglas who apparently infected Boeing. I blame the cut-throat nature of the airliner business. And it really is cut-throat, as this story about the pirate ship Airbus shows.

Lastly, let me mention my suspicions about the automobile insurance industry. I thought the insurance companies might have a valid reason for declaring a car to be a total loss even though the apparent damage could be repaired relatively cheaply. Then Iaman made a comment and I realized that these decisions might be made to support some kind of accounting sleight of hand. You see, insurance companies have huge amounts of assets, I would not be surprised if the value of their combined assets was larger than the national debt. Now insurance companies do need to have large piles of assets (they're called reserves) in case a disaster strikes and they have to pay out large sums  on a huge number of claims. There are probably a bunch of laws governing this. Meanwhile cars are getting safer and the number and size of claims are going down (pure conjecture on my part) and so using some sort of magical, mathematical formula, the insurance companies can no longer justify holding such large reserves, so they start looking for ways they can start paying out more money. Yes, weird, and contrary to everything you've ever heard about insurance companies, but I suspect most people won't argue about the insurance company totalling their car, so this is a technique that doesn't draw a lot of attention that they can use to increase their payouts and so continue to justify their enormous reserves, which often earn them more money than they collect in premiums from their customers. Yes, that last sentence was a little long, but it's early and I need to get going, so that's what we have.

Monday Evening got me started.

P.S. Link to the transcript of a speech by Boeing's general counsel at a Boeing "leadership meeting" in 2006.

Financial Pests

Walter White, businessman, counting his loot, er, legitimate profits
He's only here because I needed a pic for this post, and this one's pretty cool.

I've been using the online bill payer service at First Tech FCU for years and in general it has worked pretty well. Recently (five or ten years ago?), First Tech merged with a similar outfit in California. I didn't like that because, well, bigger, and well, California. But I understand how it might make good business sense to do that. The only problem I ran into with this change was that checks I deposited by mail took a week to show up in my checking account. Previously it took a couple of days. Okay, fine, I can make a trip to the ATM and deposit the check there.

Recently though they have overhauled their bill pay website and what was once a little clunky but fully functional has turned into a pile of slick looking crap. I've been dunning them to no effect, but yesterday I got a message that tells me that they are not running their own bill paying service, they are farming the actual work out to someone else. Criminently, is it really that hard to find competent programmers? And then I realized, no, that's not the problem, they just don't want to pay them. And besides, Blizzard Entertainment is a sucking whirlpool that is consuming all the programming talent within a zillion miles.

So today I'm looking for a new service and right away I come across something called PayTrust and the next thing I find is a two star (out of five) review on Yelp. Seems PayTrust was started by Intuit / Quicken umpteen years ago and while it may have been the cat's pajamas then, Intuit seems to have lost interest.

Not too long ago Intuit bought Mint (formerly Check, formerly Pageonce). Is Mint any better than Paytrust? I don't know. Intuit evidently thought it was worth buying, but all that means is they think it's going to make money for them. Given their history, I expect them to run it into the ground, but given the scale of these enterprises that is liable to take a decade or so, and by then someone will have created something even more "wonderful".

The Balance has a recent (August this year) review of bill paying services. Top of their list is PayTrust, the same service that got slammed on Yelp.  Next is another service from Intuit, and farther down the list is another one. They also mention MyCheckFree and Yodlee MoneyCenter about which I know nothing.

Of course, the hot ticket in bill paying is Smart Phone Apps, which I am unlikely to embrace, mostly because the dang phones cost $50 a month to operate. If your credit card is giving you one percent back on all purchases (another modern trend that I totally despise), how much do you have to spend every month to pay for your smart phone? That would be $5,000. I wonder if I can pay my mortgage with my credit card.

Wonderful Whirlpool

Last night approaching bedtime my wife informs me that there is no hot water. Well, now is a fine time to tell me Lucille. The water heater has a fancy electronic control box with a little blinky light and it's blinking out error code 6, which means the upper sensor is out of commission. A little Googling turns up this page, which suggests that the connector is weak. It's nothing special, just a small plastic connector for four wires. The contacts look like brass and since we are working with very low voltage a little bit of corrosion could be the culprit. I unplug it and replug it a couple of times but it doesn't help. Now I run into the new improved lighting protocol. You can't relight the pilot light until the thermopile has cooled off enough to stop producing electricity. You can ignite the pilot light but it will only stay lit as long as you hold down the button. Holding it longer, like two minutes instead of one, doesn't help. Let off the button and the flame goes out.

Maybe replugging the connector was not enough, so I use a small jewelers screw driver to push on the sides of the brass barrel connectors hoping to distort them enough that they will scrape the contact surface when I plug it in. I can't tell whether I have actually had any effect. I give the controller ten minutes to cool and try lighting it again. This time the pilot stays lit and the LED is blinking a nice steady 'one'. All is well. Turn the knob to on and whoosh, the burner lights off. Wake up this morning with a tank full of hot water. Mmmmm, hot water, my favorite.

This reminds me that 25 years ago we used to have a similar problem with Multibus-I computers. After they had been running for a while (a couple of years maybe?) they would just quit. The solution was to pull all the boards out and polish the edge connectors with a pencil eraser. I remember bringing at least one computer back to life this way. The thing is those edge connectors were gold plated but they still developed enough tarnish to impeded electrical contact. I haven't seen that kind of problem in years. Has connector technology improved? In any case it looks like not everyone has gotten the memo on how to deal with this.