Everything that comes out of Dossy, from the strange to the banal.
My sister-in-law and my niece are visiting from England for the next two weeks. The temperature got up into the high 90’s today, so after my girls got home from school, we set up the bubble foam machine and sent the girls outside in their bathing suits for a little cooling off. Here’s a picture that was taken to record the event:
They had a blast. Afterwards, we hosed them off and they played in the yard. Eventually, we decided to let them have a quick jump in the pool, then we headed inside.
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“Can’t you see?
It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollars and cents,
Pounds, shillings and pence.
Can’t you see?
It all makes perfect sense.”— Roger Waters, Perfect Sense, Part II
Last night, I was able to see Roger Waters perform live at the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. If you don’t recognize the name, he’s the voice you probably recognize when you listen to Pink Floyd songs.
I’d continued to follow him during his solo career and fell in love with the Perfect Sense song I quoted above, but when the tickets said “Dark Side of the Moon,” I was expecting only Pink Floyd material. But when he finally played the song, I was in my happy place. They could have played boy band covers for the rest of the evening for all I cared; I was fully satisfied.
Another treat was hearing a song he’d written recently called Leaving Beirut, which is so full of emotion that it left me incredibly sad and angry afterwards. But, it also filled me with joy and happiness, because it also meant that there are still people who understand what caring about others and sharing what (little) you might have can do to make life just that much more bearable. Roger does his part by sharing this narrative with us.
It was a fantastic concert and the place was almost packed. The hum and buzz and energy was very palpable. When we left, sometime close to 11 PM, I was more energized than when I’d gotten there at 7:00 PM. This was exactly the kind of de-stressing I needed after the last two weeks and everything that’s been going on.
Thank you, everyone who made last night possible, especially the person who was kind enough to get us these tickets!
Links:
Tags: Roger Waters, Continental Airlines Arena, East Rutherford, NJ, Pink Floyd, music, concert
(Disclaimer: I’m not an appliance repair technician, just a homeowner with an expensive appliance.)
We have a pair of stacked Bosch washer and dryer appliances, the WFK2401UC and the WTL5400UC. They weren’t cheap when we bought them, and now five years later, the washer motor gave out. Here’s what the back of the washer looks like, with the motor already removed:
It fills with water and drains just fine–it just doesn’t turn the drum and agitate. The drum rotates smoothly so the bearings don’t appear to be worn. The belt is in good condition. My guess: the brushes on the motor are worn. Here’s the motor before I started disassembling it:
After carefully taking the motor assembly apart, I was able to get the carbon brush holders out. Taking the connecting lead off the cap and sliding the brush out, here’s what one of my worn brushes looks like:
See that rectangular chunk on the left-hand side? That is what’s left of the carbon brush–it starts out close to 1.5 inches long! From what I can tell, the measurements of the brush are 3/16″ (0.1875″) x 0.5 ” x 1.5″.
Armed with this information in hand, I decided to source replacement parts locally. This was an exercise in failure: none of the appliance repair places have much in the way of Bosch replacement parts nearby. I also tried to get my hands on car alternator brushes which I’d have to cut and file to fit–no such luck. I even went to Carbone-Lorraine down in Boonton, NJ, to see if they had anything in stock that I could use as a start–they wanted to fabricate them for me, in two weeks. Defeated, I gave in and decided to get replacement parts from Bosch. Of course, I knew this meant paying a lot of money for what should be a $5 part.
After a little bit of searching around, I found Marcone Appliance Parts which had these parts in stock! As I expected, the price for a set of two carbon brushes was close to $30, instead of the $5 they ought to cost. But, it sure beats spending another $1,000-$1,500 on a new washer, right? So, I bit the bullet and placed an order which should hopefully arrive tomorrow or the next day.
In case you want to order them, here’s the information you’ll need:
If you need to order the whole motor assembly, you can get that too for just under $200:
If you’re a proud (or perhaps disgruntled) owner of a Bosch WFK2401UC washer, and it’s lost its magic smoke … perhaps this information will help you if you choose to repair it yourself–but if you do, remember to take all necessary precautions to ensure your safety, I’m not responsible for anything you do, etc., etc.
I’ll post an update once I’ve received the new brushes and installed them. I’m hoping this is all that’s wrong with the washer and we’ll be back to doing laundry in no time.
Update: The new brushes arrived today, May 22nd, and I installed them and reassembled the motor. Here’s a picture of the brand new brushes:
I had to experiment a bit with how the motor was mounted with respect to the belt tension, and it seemed to not be able to spin the motor at its full speed. I ended up removing the motor to inspect it and when I reinstalled it, I must have done something wrong because it made some really bad sounds and then shot an electrical arc which tripped the circuit breaker. I was afraid I’d let the magic smoke out of the appliance, but it seems to power up after resetting the breaker. I hope I can figure out why it’s not working properly before I do completely destroy this machine. :-)
Update: Saul has kindly shared the PDF for the owner’s manual (16.1 MB PDF) (mirror).
Update 2010-09-23: After much searching and not finding, I scanned the Use & Care Manual for the WTA3500 and WTL5400 electric dryers (1 MB PDF). I did find the installation guide (537 KB PDF) too, which I also uploaded.
Tags: Bosch WFK2401UC, washer, appliance, repair
del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since May 14, 2007 at 09:00 AM:
Always on the lookout to try new cuisines, we received an advertisement for Toros in the mail. Turkish–something not often found around here. So, we took the kids out for dinner tonight to check them out.
The first thing you notice is the (mandatory?) valet parking. Their parking area is small so it makes sense that they would prefer to manage it with valet parking.
I had called ahead to reserve our table and when we arrived we were seated promptly. The decor is nice–it has a lot of character, but not overly kitschy.
Turkish cuisine is typical Mediterranean: Turkish, Greek, Middle-Eastern, etc. are all very similar. You’ll find plenty of familiar dishes, but a bunch that are uniquely Turkish. We were in for quite a treat!
We ordered two appetizers: the Midye Dolma (stuffled mussels, cold dish) and the Arnavut Cigeri (fried veal liver, hot dish). I wasn’t terribly impressed by the mussels, but the fried veal liver–it was fantastic.
We ordered three entrees: one was lamb cubes over eggplant sauce, one was Levrek (broiled striped bass), and the last was Manti (tiny beef dumplings in yogurt sauce). All three dishes were incredibly good–some of the most well-prepared dishes I’ve had.
The desserts were excellent too. After carefully looking over the dessert tray, the girls decided they wanted three of them: Kadayif (shredded wheat with walnuts and pistachios dripping with syrup), Keskul (white almond pudding) and Sutlac (oven-baked rice pudding). My wife decided to get a cup of Turkish coffee to try and yes, its reputation for being “like mud” is accurate. I’m not a coffee drinker, but the sediment in the Turkish coffee reminded me of very, very dark chocolate–very rich and bitter. Combined with the syrupy sweetness of the Kadayif, it was incredibly delicious, albeit a bit gritty.
The prices at Toros are extremely reasonable–$4-6 for an appetizer, $10-15 for an entree and the portion sizes are very generous, $3-4 for a dessert–a lot less than I would have expected for a place with such good food and classy atmosphere.
If you’re looking to try a different cuisine and you’d like to try Turkish, I highly recommend Toros Restaurant in Clifton, NJ.
Toros Turkish & Mediterranean Cuisine
489 Hazel St
Clifton, NJ 07011
(973) 772-8032
Tags: food, review, New Jersey, Turkish, Toros, restaurant
I’ve started work that I blogged about previously on a minimal Debian 4.0 (etch) image and AOLserver 4.0.10 installation as a VMware image “appliance.” If people are interested in helping test (you can use the free VMware Player), please email me directly and I’ll share the image with you. Once it’s tested and works well enough, I’ll make it available for public download.
The image contains MySQL and SQLite3 and the necessary AOLserver modules (nsmysql, nssqlite3) installed and configured. Ideally, all one would need to do to have a fully-functioning AOLserver setup is download the appliance image and player and start it up.
This is, what I hope, will be the first steps towards a more “batteries included” AOLserver distribution.
Also! Supposing there were to be an AOLserver Conference held in May of 2008, are you interested? (Again, email me directly if you are.) It would be held somewhere in northern New Jersey, close to New York City. If you would be interested in tutorial sessions, what materials would you like to see covered? Would you be willing to teach a tutorial session? Or present a paper? (A formal Call For Papers will be published once details are ironed out.)
If you have questions or suggestions, either email me or leave a comment below. Thanks!
Update: Oh, what the heck–if anyone wants to check out the appliance image and test it, go right ahead! Use your favorite BitTorrent client and get it here: AOLserver 4.0.10 VMware Appliance 2007-05-19 (261.73 MB) [.torrent]
Tags: AOLserver, VMware, AOLserver Conference 2008
In today’s R. Stevens’s Diesel Sweeties, Lil’ Sis uses the term “Printernet” to refer to dead treeware. I can’t believe I didn’t start doing this earlier. It is, of course, the perfect term.
Click through to see the entire comic that this excerpt was taken from.
Tags: R. Stevens, Diesel Sweeties, comic, Printernet
Okay, so what if it was New Jersey’s esteemed Star-Ledger publication, I was quoted in an article by Kelly Heyboer that ran this past Sunday.
The article was about Twitter, a new social messaging service, where you can send out short little status updates and you can choose whose updates to receive. What was interesting about Kelly’s approach to writing about Twitter, compared to some other typical MSM journalist, was that she didn’t need to try and “add value” by making her own assessment of the service’s value or utility. Instead, she asked the people who regularly use it and amplified our sentiments through quotes.
Initially, when I received Kelly’s request to speak to me about Twitter, I was skeptical and nervous: why would a local newspaper care about something like Twitter? It’s not quite as pedestrian as NASCAR or American Idol, you know? I was afraid of getting asked totally irrelevant questions and then horribly misquoted out of context which seems to happen to bloggers who interact with the MSM. But, perhaps curiousity got the better of me–I wanted to speak to Kelly to find out what she was up to–so I gave her a call. Having finally seen the article today, I have to say: I’m remarkably impressed. She asked a few simple questions and let me do the talking, then she chose two quotes to try and capture some of my ideas. We did go into more depth about Twitter but I’m guessing those bits were too speculative to be of much use at this point in time.
All this praise of her article doesn’t mean I’m going to start using dead treeware newsprint, though. I’m going to stick to reading Kelly’s blog at nj.com and subscribing to her RSS feed. But, I am glad to see that there’s a journo out there that seems to “get it” and that she’s in Jersey. It almost gives me hope. :-)
Tags: New Jersey, Star-Ledger, Kelly Heyboer, Twitter, journalism
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