Expiration Date 08-08

It seems as though everything I own is hitting its expiration date, my dog, my DVD/VCR combo, my stereo, my water heater, and my outdoor water spigot.

Friday I got the part to fix my water heater. Apparently Whirlpool flamelock water heaters are pieces of crap with a faulty design in the thermocouple. It went bad a couple years ago and we had it replaced, but it started acting up again. I called this warranty number and they sent me a free replacement for the front burner assembly. I still had to pay for shipping and if I was the kind of intelligent person who has no real world skills I would have had to pay for someone to swap it out for me. Luckily I rule first period gym class, and have the ability to do dangerous natural gas burner swaps. It wasn’t too bad of a job. I unhooked the old one from the main gas valve and cleaned out the inside of the combustion chamber, swapped the main burner onto the new assembly and then hooked everything back up. I relit it and the pilot tube was leaking a bit so I tightened that up, same was true about the main burner line, but I didn’t have it seating in the valve quite right. After I got the leaks taken care of it seemed to be functioning correctly. It took about an hour, and we still have hot water so I guess that fixes the problem.

Total cost: $11 +1 hour of $100/hr billable engineering time. I guess I won’t charge myself though.

On Sunday my decade old stereo broke, and I have no idea how to fix that so it’s just another piece of electronics I need to buy. The list is now, TV/DVD player combo, DVD player, Stereo. I’m considering going on a mad spending spree and throwing all of them onto my 0% interest credit card and paying them off next April when I get my bonus.

Then, when I was playing outside with the boys, I noticed that my outdoor water spigot was dripping even though it was “turned off”. Fucking needle valves suck my balls. Spend the money and put ball valves in, they don’t have packing nuts that fail. Luckily amateur plumbing runs in my veins. The only problem is that the inside shutoff for the outside spigot also doesn’t work, it’s also a needle valve. So we go further back and we get to the main shutoff, also a needle valve, also kind of scares me every time I have to shut it off. Really all three have bad packing nuts and I wasn’t up for shutting off the water at the street and replacing all of them. I would need some sort of moral support to do that kind of major surgery.

Since I get paid to come up with clever solutions to complex problems, the solution presented itself to me after I decided not fuck with the main shutoff. I ran to Lowes with Mr. Oz while Carter took a nap. I grabbed one of those dual spout brass valves with the ball valve shutoffs and a bag of hose seals. I made the female cashier’s uterus ache as we left because my wife and I have the talent of making cute babies. I crossed my fingers and screwed the new valve over the old shitty valve. It didn’t leak. I don’t know if it will last when everything freezes, it wasn’t a freeze proof spigot to begin with, which was most likely the problem. The freezing and thawing destroyed the packing nut.

Total Cost: $9

So I spent like $20, and because I didn’t have to call a plumber I saved like $400. Maybe I can consider that and buy all the electronics shit that has crapped out on me.