Rants

In the past I have unknowingly gotten a senior discount and I haven’t ever called them on it to turn it down, the 5% off is a nice bonus. I have never asked for one that I’m not eligible for nor lied to the unattended self check out at Kroger on Wednesday. But, being 56 I do actually qualify at a few places and I’m not upset by the fact that the only reason they are cutting me some slack is because I am old or just look that way. I just didn’t think I looked that old.

Tonight we made a run to the dollar store for a few items that you can only get at a place like that. We bought 19 of them and the total came to $20.12. Nineteen bucks for the items. A nineteen cent discount. Plus one dollar thirty one cents for tax.

The nineteen cents represents 1% of our purchases and that discount is available in the State of South Carolina everyday on anything you buy…if you are older than 85!

At 9:45 our doorbell rings. I know what it is, so don’t even flinch. Donna just couldn’t stand not knowing, so she opens the front door. There stands a 12-14 year old, not in costume. She asks, “What?” He just stands there, I guess waiting for us to offer him some candy. It doesn’t happen. Donna just shuts the door and walks away shaking her head in disbelief.

When I backed the Purple Whale out of the driveway on Sunday evening to make a grocery run I was surprised to find the Low Tire Pressure Light illuminated. The car felt fine, so I knew I didn’t have a flat. I elected to make the trip and if the light didn’t go out by the time we got back I’d check the tire pressures.

As part of the dealer installed options for the Sonata was a $99* charge for the Purigen Tire Service. Which they said improves steering response, handling, fuel economy, and decreases false TPMS alarms. I guess I was supposed to assume that they had filled the tires with pure nitrogen and as proof they did, I got 4 bright green valve caps.

The TPMS light was still on when I got home. Not only was the light on, but the entire info display screen was filled with a dire warning that could not be eliminated, so I grabbed the gauge and checked all four tires. Every one read right at 31 psi. Which didn’t seem too bad, but the door sticker said the manufacturer recommends 35 psi.

One of the purported advantages of pure nitrogen is that its molecules are larger than oxygen so they cannot escape trough the rubber of the tire. One of the first things I did when I brought the car home was check the tire pressure all around because they are often way over inflated for shipping and sitting on lots so the tires don’t get flat spots. When I checked them back in April they all read 35 psi. Did, in a mere 5 months, the tires lose 4 psi of pure nitrogen pressure? Or did the dealer fill the tires with air and try and charge $99 for 4 green valve caps? Or did the whipping the Purple Whales received from Team Turner in Fantasy Football this week knock the air out of the tires?

I filled all four tires back up to 35 psi using my special 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% other gases (i.e. the air we breathe) using a cheapo Sears compressor and the light went away.

* The supplemental dealer sticker not only included the $99 dollar tire filling, but a Xzylon Interior & Exterior Protection Package for $699! These figures never were included in the bargaining process as I started at below the internet invoice pricing and gave a little (88¢ a month.) As a matter of fact I didn’t even notice the supplemental sticker until I pulled all the paperwork out of the folder the salesman gave me once I got home.

Last night when I went to the auto parts store I bought a pack of silver valve caps to put on the silver valve stems on the silver wheels.

The other day we were in Staples, trying to find out what happened to the rebate we were supposed to get for a shredder we had bought, when a display of Wireless N Routers caught my eye. Donna noticed and asked if we needed that. “Not really, but it might help with streaming Netflix,” I answered. So today, when the $20 rebate showed up in the mail, she said, “Let’s use that for that router.”

I brought home a shiny new Netgear WNR2000 for $30. Before I disconnected the ancient Linksys WRT54G I went to various spots in the house where the laptop is typically used and took some signal strength measurements.

Disconnected the Linksys and put the Netgear router in place. First I tried to discover my type of network connection using the router’s setup wizard. The next steps caused me to drop my connection to the net. So, I rebooted both modem and router and tried it again. Same results. Reboot modem and router again. Next I ran a cat5 cable from modem to PC just to make sure I did have internet access. I did. Then I tried to follow along with the included flyer to do a “No CD” install. That met with the same fate as before.

The last option was to try the install with the included CD. I followed the prompts and, holy cow, it installed just fine. The install took a lot longer than I thought it should, but it worked and didn’t install a bunch of crap on the PC either. Should went that way from the start…

After setting up the security, I logged in with the laptop and walked around the house rechecking the signal strength. It varied from 6db to 13db WORSE than the old G router. The reported speed read 65 vs 54, but every time I tried a webpage it was very slow loading.

Disconnected everything and put the old router back in play. Guess we are going to Staples tomorrow and getting the money back.

We have ceiling fans in every room in the house (except the bathrooms) and they rotate slowly keeping the air circulating. Yesterday morning I noticed it seemed kind of dim at the breakfast table. The fan in the dining room has four glass shades with gas lamp looking bulbs hanging from the bottom and one was burnt out.

Last night I unscrewed the dead bulb and it spun way too easy. The glass came out leaving the metal base still screwed into the socket. No big deal, it has happened before, so I went to the tool box and got my needle nose pliers. It is usually an easy job to pry away the metal rim a bit, grab the socket and unscrew it. Not this time. That bulb base was snug, almost seemed like it was cross threaded. I spent 15 minutes grabbing and twisting and instead of backing the base out, all I was getting was little bits of the metal in the jaws of the pliers.

I was going to have to remove light fixture from the fan to get this thing out. I unscrewed the three screws around the outside of the light fixture and dropped the light down some so I could get to the wire nuts that connected the fixture to the fan. While holding the light up with one hand I found one wire nut, but the black wire went up into the fan. Dang, the connections must be inside the bottom part of the fan.

Still holding the light fixture up with one hand I unscrewed the two screws holding the top plate of the light to the fan. It didn’t come loose. It must be held on by that threaded tube in the center. No amount of spinning loosened it. Tiring of holding up the light with one hand I made a command decision, I cut the black wire.

Now that I have the light fixture down at my level, I recommenced to removing the stuck bulb base, unfortunately no amount of grabbing and twisting the base would free it. I tried to back out another bulb and it did the same thing, glass part came out easy and the metal base stayed in the socket. I guess it is time to buy a new light fixture.

I then disconnected the cover on the bottom of the fan so I could get the light fixture base plate off. As I removed that piece from the fan I noticed that the plastic fan speed switch was broken where it came out of the housing. I grabbed some glue I have in the garage and tried to piece the switch back together. A few minutes later when everything was dry I put the switch back through the hole, but it came apart again as soon as I tried to screw the nut on. I gave up at that point figuring we would just go buy a new light fixture and new a switch on Thursday.

This morning I took the switch to work to try using some super glue. It work a lot better than the household cement I had, but it didn’t last through a good solid tightening of the nut.

So today after work we visited a BBHIW for a switch & light fixture. The replacement switches were not in the first couple places we looked, so we had to resort to asking for help. Felt kind of bad about it, not so much because I had to ask for help, but we seemed to have interrupted a personal conversation between two employees to do it. She led us to the switches, one aisle over from where we found some other repair parts, and while we had her attention we asked where the ceiling fan light fixtures were as well.

Because most ceiling fans these days come with the light fixture already included, the selection of add on lights was very limited. They had some 19.95 school house lights, but none were in bright brass which is what we needed to match our fan. As a matter of fact, the only one that came in bright brass was a multipurpose one with 4 different colors, but it had a price tag of $39.95! That and the cost of the switch, $6.95, put us close to $50, to just repair something. A brand new Hunter fan with light fixture was $65.

So, because one light bulb burnt out, we ended up buying a whole new fan.