Toms Diary

Archive for March 25th, 2010

Today’s Business: 2010-03-25

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Today’s Activities

Shower. DONE.
Cat duty. DONE.
Pay all (4) pending bills. IN PROGRESS.
Do all 1 pending loads of laundry. IN PROGRESS.
Set up automatic monthly bill payments for Mom’s medical insurance premiums. IN PROGRESS.

Log

07:15 AM: I’m up. My weight did not change from yesterday. It’s still 173.5 Lbs. See here for a summary of the progress on this goal so far in 2010.

07:20 AM: Listened to more of the Best African American Essays: 2009 book overnight.

08:50 AM: Called [Emmy] to make sure she was awake for her TV show, Pittsburgh Today Live at 9:00. In the brief talk, we both decided that our BMIs aren’t as low as we’d like them, and we resolved once more to remedy that problem this year. Trim Tom, I’m coming!

10:20 AM: Listened to more of the Best African American Essays: 2009 book while folding yesterday’s laundry.

11:40 AM: Initiated the process of establishing automatic monthly deductions from Mom’s checking account, for her health insurance premiums. Click here for details of today’s effort to that end.

01:50 AM: Listened to more of the Best African American Essays: 2009 book, with my undivided attention this time.

02:55 PM: Posted the Simple Shredder Idea piece.

03:55 PM: Posted the Why Vacuum Tubes Glow Blue piece.

04:50 PM: Watched today’s episode of The Young and the Restless on the DVR.

05:00 PM: [Emmy] called to say that her microwave oven does not respond when she presses the START button. I asked her to unplug it for ten seconds and plug it back in. However, this did not correct the situation. She’ll have to enlist the aid of someone sighted nearby to see if an error message is displaying when she presses the button.

Additionally, our phone connection this time was quite choppy (interspersed with lots of short-duration silences — like an intermittent connection or an overly taxed Internet link). Plus, the Internet connection on her computer appeared quite slow, and she’s picked up her phone twice today, to hear a fast busy signal rather than a dial tone. Hopefully, she’ll give Comcast time to grow their Internet infrastructure (install higher speed lines for greater call-handling capacity) before she switches back to Verizon.

05:55 PM: Posted the Dishwasher Repairs: 2010 piece.

07:00 PM: Put clean sheets on the bed, in preparations for [Mentat's] visit; he arrives tomorrow and will stay until Sunday afternoon.

09:15 PM: Talked with [Emmy]. Her new phone service is acting up. All she gets is that fast busy signal when she picks up her phone. So at first, our talks were confined to her cell phone, which is also giving her grief. This phone seems to require a lot more signal than her other one in order to carry on a drop-out-free conversation on it. Since we got this phone as part of my family share plan, I’ll have to call and ask the provider how to get it replaced.

11:00 PM: [Emmy] called me back once she finished with Comcast. They had her power-cycle her modem, and that restored normal operation to her telephone. She’s frustrated over all these problems since she switched her phone service to Comcast. But I advised her to at least give Comcast a couple months to work out the bugs and / or expand the system as may be required. After all, it is a much newer technology. So it’s bound to hiccup a few times. Besides, I’d hate to see her spend another $55 to switch back to Verizon so soon.

12:00 AM: Bed time again. Enjoy the rest of your night and I’ll see you back here tomorrow. Good night.

Tom

Received Mail and Shipments

The 2010-03-03 issue of Promo Only’s EADFF series.
Balance transfer checks from Capital One Bank. No thanks.
Solicitation from Chase Bank, attempting to entice Mom to use her credit card more. No thanks.
Health insurance solicitation from Bankers Life and Casualty Company. No thanks.

Posted in DVR, Emmy, Journal, Mentat, People, Telephone, Television, Today's Business | No Comments »

Diary Revisions: 2010-03-25

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Today, I either added or modified the following posts in the Tom’s Diary blog for improved brevity, clarity, categorization, decreased spelling errors, appearance, and search-ability:

Dishwasher Repairs: 2010

Simple Shredder Idea

Highmark Web Site Woes

Today’s Business: 2010-03-25

Today’s Diet: 2010-03-25

Today’s Business: 2010-03-24

Today’s Diet: 2010-03-24

Projects Page

Today’s Business: 2010-02-25

Dear Lynn: On Tube and Transistor Radios

Why Vacuum Tubes Glow Blue

Tom

Posted in Lynn, People, Revisions | No Comments »

Dishwasher Repairs: 2010-03-25

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

So we have this 2.5 year-old Kenmore dishwasher built in under a counter in the kitchen. For nearly a year now, we’ve been unhappy with its performance. The unit fills okay, and while running, we hear lots of water sloshing around for the entire run period of each part of the cycle (rinse, wash, rinse, rinse again). Each time it fills, the water sounds like it’s circulating well, the whole time, until the system pumps it out. Yet the dishes aren’t as clean as we’d prefer.

Our complaints are:

Around a quarter of the dishes in each load remain quite dirty after even the heaviest duty pots-and-pans cycle ends.
More often than not, the glasses come out cloudy; not crystal clear.

We contracted a repairman to investigate what might be the matter. He did the following:

Removed the jet arm and verified that all openings in it were clear.
Removed some other pieces underneath the jet arm pedestal and verified that all channels were open.
However, he did find that some food was clogging a strainer that filters the recirculating water. He removed the debris.

But we still get dirty dishes.

I know about rinsing plates, bowls, and pots off before dish-washing them. We do. In fact, I can accept the occasional dirty plate. But the cloudiness on the glasses? Not so much. It’s as though the rinse agent dispenser doesn’t dispense. I suppose I could manually verify this by pouring in some agent by hand when the rinse cycle begins. Any appliance repairmen out there who know how to test the rinse agent dispenser on a Kenmore?

The only other possible problem I can think of is that some-thing’s wrong with the water pump, and that though it sounds like copious amounts of water are being hurled at the dishes in there, perhaps it’s not pumping as strongly as it should.

I really hope we don’t have to replace this thing already; this would makd three dishwashers in five years. Grrrrrrrr. At $500 a pop, you want to avoid frequently replacing these if you can.

I’ll keep you posted on our progress with resolving this one.

Tom Hesley

Posted in Home Maintenance, Journal, Projects | 1 Comment »

Simple Shredder Idea

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

So I’m shredding various expired documents this morning to keep them from the prying eys of dumpster divers, when my Royal shredder stops running before completely clearing the inbound slot of paper. As I suspected, it was full.

I dread emptying this thing because I often spill some of the contents all over the kitchen floor around the garbage can. Now I’ve owned my document shredder for probably five years, and every few months, this problem has resurfaced, meaning that over five years, I’ve emptied this shredder more than twenty times. Every time I do, I find later, these little inch-long strips of paper of every color; the shredded byproducts of credit card promotions, Post-It notes with secrets I’d rather not share with anyone, and customized advertisements (you know the kind that they print your name within the ads).

Then, there’s those occasional, jaggy plastic strips from shredded credit cards. Indeed, I don’t bother cutting up old plastic anymore; I just it them through the shredder, which renders the card numbers highly unintelligible. The more you can jumble up such numbers in this day of rampant identity theft, the safer you’ll be. Though I’m not sure if the machine was designed to mince up cards, it nonetheless does a right fine job. Plus, I’ve experienced no problems with it beyond its ”electric eye” getting dirty now and then. It still cuts as well as the day I bought it.

But whether its payload contains paper, plastic, or metal from shredded staples, emptying this thing often requires that I drag out the vacuum cleaner affterwards (I don’t think they want you putting staples in it either. But again, after five years, it still works like a charm). Even then, it’s hard to get all that strewn mess up, and I often wind up down on my hands and knees with a moist paper towel, sopping up those last few little pesky pieces that cleverly evaded the initial vacuum.

I’m not sure what made today different than any of the previous twenty-plus times I’ve done this. But while carrying the bin down to the kitchen, the very simple idea occurred to empty it into a bigger garbage can. Simple? Yes. Quite. I know! In fact, you’re probably wondering why I even took the time to write this out. Normally, I wouldn’t. But along with this idea, occurred the question: Why hadn’t I thought of this before? After all, we have a much larger repository in the basement, whose mouth is perhaps three times as big as that of the plastic container from the shredder. I’m always down there throwing stuff into it. So why did I never think to carry the shredder bin down an extra flight of steps to the cellar so as to avoid creating the kitchen mess every time? I’d have saved myself a couple of hours over the years, of dragging out the vacuum, working it, and then putting it back away.

Why did this occur today? Probably we all command much more knowledge than immediately comes to bear in daily situations. I’ve always thought that more knowledge means more power, and that’s still true to a big degree. But what’s also true is that quick recall of the knowledge we already have, also augments our greater control over our environments. Now I’ve read hundreds of books and seen as many movies. Often, memories come back in such vivid detail that I can recite entire lines and passages. So I know the information is in my head. But recalling much of it, on demand, has never been a strong suit of mine. Through the years, I’ve read, and read, and read, and so often have been saddened to find that whe someone asks me what I read, I’m unable to tell them about most of it.

All this makes me think that simply cramming more and more information into my mind won’t make me as smart as I wish. I’ve never been particularly good at taking tests; I’ve gotten C’s in classes that I knew full well I possessed the data to ace. But when it came time to spit out what I’d learned, that information abandoned me. Hmmm. I’ll have to change focus a little from cramming to cultivating quick recall. Working both these ends together will get me there more quickly I guess, than focusing entirely on acquiring more knowledge. My need to acquire more may be offset by an enhanced ability to efficiently manage what I already possess. Thoughts?

Tom Hesley

Today’s Business: 2010-03-25

Posted in Housekeeping | No Comments »

Highmark Web Site Woes

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

10:57 AM: I registered Mom on the Himark Blue Cross Blue Shield web site; her medical insurance provider. This will give her (me) login privileges so that the account can be managed from here. We need this to set up automatic monthly premium payments from her checking account.

There were initial problems accessing the web site however; a message kept popping up, saying that their computers were having problems. So I called the customer service number on Mom’s insurance card, and spent nearly two minutes establishing my identity to the satisfaction of the woman on the other end of the phone. After giving her all the information about Mom she requested, she asked me what I needed. When I told her about my web site problems, she immediately disclaimed responsibility for this, and replied that I had to talk to someone at a different phone number, who does their web site support. Hmmm.

So, she transferred me there, where I had to provide the same blame information all over again. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr. Things like this are no doubt why I get edgy anytime I must do business with big institutions such as this. I don’t have the patience for this sort of repetitive activity, nor do I aspire to get it. But anyway, it turned out that when using Internet Explorer, you must set your Internet security level to MEDIUM or lower. Otherwise, the http://highmarkbcbc.com/ site won’t load.

Well once I got in, I completed the registration. This process creates a login Id and password. However, before I can establish the automatic drafts, I must wait to receive a printed copy of her newly assigned PIN (takes three to five business days). Grrrrrrrrrrrr!

Now I realize that in this security-conscious age of villainous hackers that we all must be inconvenienced a little by these sorts of measures to prove our identities and thus, safeguard against identitytheft. But Jesus Louise, come on! I mean, I’m a reasonable fellow. I can well tolerate providing the requested information ONCE. I just hated supplying it TWICE! The first woman I spoke with should have first asked what I wanted by saying something like, “How may I direct your call?” or “What specifically do you need?” She ought to have learned my questions before asking me to prove who I was. Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh!

Finally, what’s most irksome about this encounter is that affordable technology exists today that would have allowed her to forward the information I provided to the web site department, and save me from having to give it again. But either Highmark does not employ this, or this woman chose not to use it. In this day and age, there’s no excuse for either case, in my humble opinion.

Also, waiting for the PIN to be mailed seems a bit extreme. After all, I had all her account information, her social security number, her age, her birthday, her street address, her billing statements, and I even could have provided the routing and account numbers of the check that I last sent them. But no, their policies mandate that I can’t create periodic checking account deductions until I get that PIN.

Ah well. Just something else to keep track of until the paperwork arrives. you know, it’s a real shame that a task like this, that should take a mere few minutes to finish, actually requires nearly a week of real time. No wonder there’s such a growing frustration in the US with institutions; government or otherwise.

Okay, I’m don ranting. Take care now, and have a great day.

Tom Hesley