Darkoshi

I have a memory from the 1980s of a certain semi-public restroom (like in restaurants, but this was a building with a big meeting room where one of my aunt's clubs had meetings and events) in Germany. The building itself was probably built in the preceding decades.

The soap dispenser was metal with a small crank-handle that you would turn. Inside must have been a block of bar soap. Turning the crank would grate off flakes of soap into your other waiting hand. I think the soap was pink.

The hand towel was a long length of fabric which presumably was rolled up at the top and bottom inside the device it was dispensed from. You would only see a section of the fabric at a time. To get a fresh part of the towel you would either pull on the fabric, or perhaps turn a knob on the side; I don't recall exactly. This would cause the fabric to unroll from the top and get rolled up into the bottom of the unit.

The towel was mostly white like the one in this photo, but I think it had colored stripes on both vertical edges instead of in the center.

This video shows the inside of a similar device:
Continuous Cloth Roll Towel Machine

The soap device was like this one:
GRUNELLA® -Seifenmühle
Soap for cranking

That wasn't the only restroom I encountered those devices in; they were common back then in many places. Similar devices can still be bought nowadays, and for your own bathroom too, from what I see.

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.

Last year I found out unfrosted poptarts are vegan. (The frosted ones contain gelatin.) That made me nostalgic, so I bought a box each of unfrosted cinnamon and strawberry poptarts. They still taste like I remember from childhood. Sugary-sweet morning memories; memories that go along with Saturday morning cartoons on the TV. Flintstones, He-man, Thundercats Ho!

Did you know even a single unfrosted poptart contains 12 grams of sugar, which per the nutrition panel is 24% of the recommended daily intake? (Contrary to what I'd expect, the frosted ones purportedly don't have much more sugar than the unfrosted ones.) That is one reason I haven't eaten up these 2 boxes of tarts yet; I only take them out once in a big while as a treat.

I heat mine in the toaster, but the microwave heating instructions on the box surprise me:
"Heat 3 seconds at a time until warm enough."

Does Kellogg's truly expect anyone to start and stop their microwave every *3* seconds to check on the warmth of their tarts? I am guessing those instructions are to avoid any lawsuits due to accidental over-heating of the tarts, since some microwaves heat a lot faster than others. But I wonder if three seconds may not even be long enough for a microwave to start emitting its rays. My microwave generally needs to run for a minimum of 20 seconds to result in any noticeable heating of the food.

Today I learned that the "Total Area" listed on packages of toilet paper is the amount for all the rolls together, not the amount per roll. The numbers made a lot more sense once I realized that. I'd been trying to figure out how the 240-sheet rolls could possibly have a bigger area than the same-size 300-sheet rolls... but they didn't; the package just had more rolls in it.

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I'm thinking of getting one of those non-electric toilet bidet attachments. I plan to try it out on a toilet that only I use, which ought to reduce the squick factor a lot for me, but still I don't know.

If any of you has advice on what to look for or what to avoid, please share.

They look so weird to me. Little tubes ejecting and angling upwards. So phallic.

At first I was thinking of trying out a "bidet bottle" instead, and maybe I still will. But even the ones with long spouts must be awkward to use.

Note to self: When using Qiao's gas stove, note that turning the dial past the high setting makes the flames get smaller again. Maybe that's why it was taking so long for the water to boil this time.

Every time I use that stove, I come up with another hypothesis as why it takes so long to boil the water or to cook the food: 1) The burner grate must not have been on straight, causing the pot to be further from the flames. 2) The top left burner seems to produce bigger flames than the bottom right one; I should use the former instead of the latter. 3) ...

When I turn on the stove hood's fan, air blows out of a vent on the top of the hood back into the kitchen. That confused me the first time I noticed it. But from what I've read, some hoods can be installed to either vent air out through a vent pipe, or (for those without a vent pipe) through a filter back into the kitchen. The cabinet over Qiao's stove has a vent pipe going through it. So I wonder if whoever installed the hood did it wrong. I need to figure out how to check that someday.

I dislike the smell of the exhaust gasses from the stove. It's not a smoky smell nor an (unburned) natural gas smell, but still not something that seems healthy to breathe in. (It's sort of like the stuffy smell you get from burning candles, but worse.) Maybe if the hood were working right, there'd be less of that smell. In the meantime, when I use the stove or oven, I open some windows and turn on a standing fan to blow the exhaust gasses outside.

Such as the small freezer compartments in the mini refrigerators often found in motels...
(It was so full of ice that the little freezer flap wouldn't even open more than part-way, because of ice on the hinge area.)

First I tried chipping away at some of the ice with a screwdriver. That didn't work well.

I thought of using the motel room's hair-dryer, but it was mounted to the wall and the cord didn't reach far enough.

I looked up the refrigerator model's manual online. It said NOT to try to chip away the ice as that could cause damage. It said NOT to use a hair-dryer as that could deform the plastic parts. It said to turn the refrigerator off and wait for it to melt. With a warm bowl of water inside to speed things along. But that would have still taken too long.

I tried tossing teaspoonfuls of warm water onto the ice at the top of the hinge, but that didn't work well.

So then I ran hot water on a washcloth and used the warm washcloth to melt the ice, with a towel at the bottom of the fridge to catch dripping water. I wrung out the washcloth over the sink and repeated it many times. Once I got the flap to open all the way, I continued melting away much of the frost and the ice inside the freezer compartment. Using a small hand-towel would have worked well too, maybe even faster.

Someone left a thank you on an informational entry I posted over 5 years ago about the lint filter on my old washing machine. Yay, that's why I post those kind of things sometimes. To help anyone else who may encounter the same problems I did.

Today I used my lithium battery-powered leaf blower (Greenworks model 24282). Sometimes it sucks my clothes against the bottom side where it pulls air in. When that happens, I shift it further away from myself. But today it sucked in the drawstring on my pants, tore off a piece, and started making a bad noise. So I turned it off.

This evening I extricated the piece of drawstring that had gotten stuck inside the unit. After removing the nozzle, I could see the piece by looking in through the front of the unit with a flashlight. But it was stuck so tight that pulling on it with long tweezers and a long-necked pair of pliers wasn't able to get it free. So I opened the blower up. It has 13 screws on one side which hold the 2 halves of the housing together. After removing the screws, I couldn't get the halves apart at first. Finally I noticed there was a plastic warning sticker* under the handle, right over where the halves joined together. That was also holding them together. Cutting a slit down the middle of the sticker allowed the halves to came apart easily.

Pulling on the drawstring as I'd been doing before had gotten it stuck worse. It needed to be pulled out inwards from the center of the fan, rather than outwards. With the unit open, it was easy to do.

*One of the tiny icons on the sticker even warns against wearing loose clothing. Though without looking at the manual as I'm doing now, I wouldn't have been able to figure out that's what the icon represented. Another icon warns about long hair... yikes, that would be worse to get stuck. The blower is so light and easy to use (and unlike other tools, doesn't have any sharp blades; it only blows air!) that I hadn't thought of it as potentially dangerous.

..

Now I feel inspired to try fixing my dryer (I did once before already, so have an idea what the problem is). But starting to dismantle a dryer at 3am is not a good idea.

Finally, some refrigerators with a door-in-door feature similar to my 1984 Whirlpool fridge's "Serva-Door".

https://www.lg.com/us/discover/instaview-door-in-door

Dear GE,

I spend too much time agonizing over which setting to choose on the cycle selector knob on your washing machine. The choices do not make sense to me.

There is a Soil Level knob, and a Water Temperature knob, and both of those make sense. High Soil Level = longer wash cycle, and/or stronger agitation, right? The Water Temperature has perhaps too many choices (tap cold vs cold vs cool) but I can handle that. At least I can figure out what the difference is between them.

But the cycle selector knob has 13 options, and no matter which one I choose, it might be the wrong choice!

Why are there choices for "Whites", "Colors", "Dark Colors", and "Cold Wash"? The water temperature knob is supposed to control whether the water is hot or cold. Aren't whites supposed to be washed in warm or hot water, while colors are supposed to be washed in cold? What in god's name will happen if I set the water temperature to Hot, and select "Cold Wash" or "Dark Colors"??

Why are there different choices for "Heavy Duty" and "Jeans"? Aren't jeans heavy duty?
What if I had white jeans to wash?? Would I choose Whites, Heavy Duty, or Jeans?
What if I wanted to wash white jeans together with white sheets? Would I choose Whites, Towels/Sheets, or Jeans?

Why is there a "Towels/Sheets" selection? Towels are among the thickest heaviest things to wash, while sheets are among the lightest.

Why are there different selections for "Casuals" and "Active Wear"... oh wait, I remember now from reading the instructions, that "active wear" means stuff worn while one does sports and gets all sweaty, right? So if I have a sweaty clothes, maybe I should choose that rather than the other choices. But what if the sweaty clothes are dark-colored? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh..............!!!

What if I wash one small colored towel along with medium and dark colored clothes? Will it cause the clothes to come out with lint? Had I better not include the towel?


The instructions say that the "Whites" option should be used for "Whites and household linens". But don't linens belong under "Towels/Sheets"?? Or does "household linens" refer to linen table cloths instead of linen sheets?...

For "Towels/Sheets", the instructions say "It is recommended that towels and sheets be washed separately for best care and washing performance". At first I thought that meant that they should be washed separately from other clothes, using this option. But now it occurred to me that maybe it means that towels should be washed separately from sheets! Gahhhh. Why does it have to be so difficult. I never had a problem washing towels together with sheets in the past.

Let's see. Monday, the dogs dug out from Qiao's yard.
Tuesday night or morning, they dug out from my yard. Or maybe dug and climbed; I'm still not certain. Searched the neighborhood nearly 3 hours for them and then finally found them in 2 different backyards one street over. Which I only noticed because our neighbor's dog barked and looked in that direction. (When I was searching before, I tended to look everywhere *except* in other fenced areas, wrongly assuming that if a yard was fenced off with a closed gate, that the dogs wouldn't have been able to get in there).
Then we took them back to Qiao's place where we can keep the small dog (the main instigator) tied up with a cable more easily until the fence is better secured. I think I will have to put down mesh fencing along the ground after all.

Wednesday, I cut up and cooked 2 butternut squashes that my mom gave me from her yard. They grew on their own out from her compost bin; not just these 2, but several more, all summer long.

Thursday, Qiao's retina started detaching.. he had surgery on that eye just 2 months ago for the same problem, but this time it is even worse than before (even though at an appointment 2 weeks ago, the eye doctor said it was looking good). He has emergency surgery scheduled this week on Tuesday. I hope they can fix it. His other eye also had the same problem several years back, and that one has been ok since its surgery (which was done using silicone oil, versus the recent surgery which used a gas bubble). This time the doctor's notes say he might use a scleral buckle, and/or silicone, or another gas bubble. We're hoping it won't be a bubble again, because Qiao had a hard time keeping the required face down position last time.

Friday, I made a new patient appointment with a doctor, so that I'll finally have a "primary care doctor". The nearest doctor's offices to me weren't taking new patients. So it's at a place somewhat further away, but not too far. The earliest appointment date they had was early December. Initially, it will be to discuss these foot nerve issues and/or whatever comes back from the blood test results and/or maybe the cracking sounds my neck has been making for almost a year now.

Today I ordered a new washing machine. I found out that there aren't any specific standards that must be met to call a washer "high efficiency". I found out that different companies / countries use to measure tub capacity differently, so that what one might call 2.5 cubic feet, another might call 3 cubic feet. But around 2011 the U.S. government started enforcing standardized measurements. I found that a lot of washers now include a setting for "Casual" clothes. Ie., whites, colors, casual, delicates, jeans, bulky items. The other ones are familiar, but I have no idea how "casual" clothes are supposed to be different than the others, or how they are supposed to be specially washed.

At work, they are finally giving me a new laptop with an SSD hard drive. It will be Windows 10 though; I'll have to get used to that.

I've started updating my Firefox add-on "ToggleDocumentColors" for WebExtensions. But because of everything else, I haven't had time to do much yet. It has to be implemented totally differently than before, because WebExtensions don't let you read or update the browser about:config settings. That boggled my mind when I found out. So instead, the add-on will have to "inject" a CSS sheet into the page, and the user will have to enter their desired colors as add-on settings, instead of the add-on being able to use the color settings the user already entered in the browser settings.

On Friday morning, an alarm siren was going off in a nearby shopping center. It could be heard at my house even inside with the windows closed - in the rooms on that side. That includes the room with my computer, and we had a Skype meeting that morning, so I was hearing this faint high-low-high-low-high-low siren noise in the background for more than an hour. By the time I was ready to leave for work, I was so annoyed that I started yelling (inside the house), in a wailing way, imitating the sound. It was slightly amazing - I was really able to imitate it pretty well... sort of like the wailing done in some North African cultures when someone dies. Ululation, that is the word. But I was using my throat/vocal cords to ululate, as opposed to my tongue. My voice was hoarse for the rest of the day.

Late Friday evening when I got back from work, the siren was still going! I called the police to report it, and was thankful that I was going to Qiao's house for the weekend.

Sunday evening when I got back from Qiao's house, the siren was still going!!!! I called Qiao and told him that I was coming right back, after I gathered my stuff for work, and more food. On the way back, I drove down to see where exactly the siren was coming from. It wasn't from where I expected; it was from an empty store even further away.