Time flows, tree glows

This year, I took the ornaments off the Christmas tree on May 27. I left the tree up, still enamored with the Twinkle lights on it which can be set to many different color combinations and effects. Today I took the silver garland off the tree branches. I'm still enamored of the lights and won't take the tree down at all this year (possibly the first time ever). It's too late anyway; no point in taking it down now just to put it up again in a few months. In December, maybe I will take it over to Qiao's house for a change.

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I have watched both the Olympics and the Paralympics opening ceremonies. Both were wonderful. I have the closing ceremonies recorded, ready to watch.

touchpad failures

My oven's touchpad isn't working right. The Temperature Up button makes the temperature go down. The Down button brings up Auto Clean. So I am stuck at a maximum temperature of 350, unless I want to Broil something.

It had a similar problem in 2015. Back then on the original Whirlpool unit, the Temperature Down button failed first. I was able to purchase and install a 3rd-party replacement touchpad to fix it, for $200. Now, it looks like a replacement may no longer be available. I've emailed the company I bought it from last time to find out for sure.

Looking up the problem, there are many videos indicating that oven touchpad buttons failing is a common problem with all brands. In most examples, the buttons don't work at all rather than doing the wrong thing. The videos show how to clean the ribbon cable contacts to fix the problem. One guy said that fixes the problem 70% of the time. I didn't try that back in 2015, but did yesterday. Today I tried it again, just to make sure I got those contacts very clean. It didn't fix my problem.

Maybe one of the resistors in the touchpad is shorted. I was looking at the photo I'd made of its wiring prior to installing it. Groups of buttons are wired together along the same metal connector thingy, with what looks like a flat resistor between each one. The control unit probably determines which button was pressed based on the voltage between the various connectors. If the resistor right after the Auto Clean button is shorted, that could result in my problem. Unfortunately the Temp Up button is the last in the path, so there's no other button I can press to make the temperature go up. It's strange that basically the same buttons failed both times, on different brands of touchpads.

Oh well. Being able to bake only at 350 degrees is better than not baking at all. I want to still bake something tonight.

If these touchpads failing is such a common problem, they ought to make more ovens with manual knob controls like in the old days.

Earlier this year, my microwave oven's touchpad was also acting up. Some of the buttons didn't respond, or only when pressed in a specific way. I tried one suggested fix (blow dryer) which didn't help. Later on, the problem went away on its own. Probably seasonal/humidity related.