The consensus opinion is that one does not call the fire department when the smoke alarm goes off unless one actually locates smoke. The fact that I did not call the fire department, but instead The Mrs. did, apparently does not eliminate my shame.
The dishwasher is now fixed. $100. $60 to come out, then $20 for every 15 minutes, or something like that. The problem? A bad connection to the power pigtail due to the wrong size wire nuts being used. So we paid $100 to have a guy replace two wire nuts - something I could very easily have done myself. My only saving grace here was that it was a major pain-in-the-ass to get to the power connection, so it took him a half hour despite being a professional. I probably would have removed the dishwasher from the counter to do the work, but he was able to do it by reaching underneath. I couldn't even find the power connection when I looked down there. The Mrs. (who witnessed the repair) reported that it was behind some plastic panel back underneath that needed to be removed.
My only redeeming feat of manliness this week was that I changed the battery in my truck. This is the first vehicle in a while where I could actually get to the battery without removing tons of stuff, and since Sears doesn't (or didn't) charge for the install if you buy the battery, I used to let them do it. It took them over two hours to change the battery on The Mrs's old winivan, which needed to have a body crossmember, a couple wiring harnesses, a fuse box, and the air filter box removed in order to get to the battery.
I got a battery at Checker, though. It's an Exide platinum series. I hope it's not crap. It has 20 more cold cranking amps (770A) than did the old battery, but it's a bit smaller. Yesterday when I got out of work, when I started the truck, it did one of those grr-pause-vroom things that a battery does when it's just starting to go. It was the original and just passed 5 years of age, which is pretty good for an original battery, as they're usually crap.
3 comments:
"one does not call the fire department when the smoke alarm goes off unless one actually locates smoke"
Ha! Real men (such as The JohnnyB never call the fire department, even when there's real fire.
I disagree! There may be electrical problems and one could not see the smoke. Always better to be safe! Reconsider your conclusion. Plus, the firefighters love going on runs!
They checked the whole house with their nifty infrared thingy, so we could rest assured that there was not a fire lurking in the walls or ceiling. In a house this size, too! And it was 2 in the morning! I was in pure reaction mode. We did learn something very valuable, which makes it all worthwhile.
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