Home From Arizona

Roland's Rambling Random Ruminations

We’ve arrived back home, safe and sound. We had an enjoyable trip and got to spend some time with three of our kids. It’s been a great couple of weeks!

  1. The temperatures in Chandler were definitely higher than we were expecting, going so far as to set records. Of course, the day after we left much more normal weather moved in. I so not surprised.
  2. I really enjoyed the grandsons Colten, Jackson, and Austin. They are fun to be around, fun to play with, and fun to listen to. Colten is deeply involved with World of Warcraft (when he’s not texting with Nina), Jackson is a kindred spirit with cream soda, and for Austin, Sprite is the best tasting thing in the whole world. Thanks Jaelene and Scott for having us for the week!
  3. We stopped overnight at Heather’s on the way down and on the way back. Danielle was Really Sick when we drove down. Thankfully, she was almost back to normal on our way back. I don’t think Danielle does sick very well. It seems to get in the way of what she really wants to be doing.
  4. The phrase “Everything in Phoenix is for sale” seems to be true. Not only is there very good shopping in the greater Phoenix area, it looked like about half the homes in some areas were for sale as well. I spent a couple of hours browsing through Fry’s Electronics and was very surprised at the low inventory levels there. Lots of empty or very sparsely populated shelf space through most of the store. The down economy is very evident at Fry’s.
  5. We had a very nice drive back with a couple of interesting stops. Here’s a couple of pictures;

Steps and Canyons
Steps and Canyons
The drive from Flagstaff to Page is very interesting, including a beautiful ascent up the side of a tall cliff. The views are spectacular. Near the top is a pullout where I took this picture. The beginnings of the Grand Canyon are in the middle of the picture. The weather for this part of the drive was pleasant although a chilly, stiff wind was blowing.

Dinosaur Dung
Dinosaur Dung
Nina saw a Rock Shop on the way down that looked interesting, so we stopped on the way back at the shop. It was indeed an interesting place. There were lots of different kinds of rocks piled up in areas around the yard, including this unusual collection of “rocks”. I’m not sure what I’d do with them in my yard, but they would make for an interesting conversation.

Dinosaur Meal
Dinosaur Meal
At the aforementioned Rock Shop this dinosaur sculpture was on display, with an added Halloween feature. There were actually three rock shops, all right next to each other, featuring rocks from the “Orderville Mine”. I didn’t know there was a mine in Orderville, Utah.
Snow
Snow
I think we went through most of the available mountain west weather patterns on the drive home. We went from hot, dry and dusty in Phoenix to heavy winds as we drove across the Navajo Reservation, to hail near Knab. Then as we drove over the summit from US-89 to I-15, we came into fog and snow. That was followed by some very heavy rain showers. It was good to be in a well-running, air-conditioned, heated car!

And we’re happy to be home. TTFN!

Life Is Pretty Dang Good On The Road

General, Travels
Michael "The Shark" Brown
Michael "The Shark" Brown

We’re in Chandler, Arizona at the moment visiting with our daughter Jaelene and her family. Right now, Nina is teaching the three grandkids how to make balloon animals. They are having a very good time and lots of balloons are popping. Making these balloon animals takes a lot of patience during the learning phase for sure.

We’ll be here over the weekend, leaving on Tuesday morning (very early) to drive back north retracing out trip down.

We left Pocatello after Church on Sunday afternoon and drove down to Heather’s in North Salt Lake. It’s always a delightful visit at her house … except Danielle was definitely not feeling good while we were there. It seemed to be more of a cold than the flu, but who knows. So far Nina and I seem not to be infected (another balloon just popped and I jumped!). We did some shopping on Monday, that is after I drove back to Pocatello to pick up some meds I forgot to bring with me. That evening we attended the local high school’s presentation of West Side Story. Grandson Michael was in the chorus and he’s got some very smooth moves. They’re performing every night this week and the final presentation is next Monday evening. I’m sure he’ll be plenty tired when the musical is finally had it’s run!

Early Tuesday morning we headed south on I-15. It was almost a perfect day for driving. Absolutely no weather, partly sunny skies, and reasonably cool temperatures. Twelve and a half hours later we pulled into Jaelene’s driveway.

The Big Event … actually Two Big Events … are Colten’s 11th birthday next Monday (with a family party on Sunday afternoon) and Jaelene is running in a 5K race on Saturday morning. Hence the reason we’re here.

However, Arizona is still HOT. 97° today and warmer forecast for the next several days. Since it had already turned to winter in Pocatello, we’re finding the temperatures to be more than a bit uncomfortable. I think by the time we leave, we’ll find Pocatello to be plenty cold when we get home.

Today we spent a couple of hours at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. The native American exhibits were very interesting and I really enjoyed our time there. It would be worth a return visit for sure. We rode the light rail from Mesa to the museum and back. That was also a pleasant ride and there seemed to be good ridership as well.

Life is pretty dang good down here!

Swimming Is Good For You?

Body Stuff, General

Nina’s been going to the Fitness Center for several years, primarily to do water aerobics. There are two locations in Pocatello, one downtown and another further north (although nothing is very far away in Pocatello). The water aerobics classes have been all consolidated at the north location which has a larger pool.

Nina receives a bunch of guest passes each year when she renews her membership and has regularly invited me to go with her to the aerobics class which is held Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesday and Thursday she would go to the pool to swim laps for about an hour. A couple of weeks ago I decided to go with her for the free swim.

The pool is nice, reasonably warm, and not crowded at 7 a.m. It turns out that I could only go three times on Nina’s guest passes, and I need to do something that resembles exercise, so I added myself to her membership. Yesterday was my first day at the water aerobics class.

The instructor is quite fit, and even that would be an understatement. She’s fun, energetic, and goes non-stop. The class started at 8:45 a.m. and continued without pause for fifty minutes followed by ten minutes of cool-down stretching. My arms felt like jelly when the class finished. Thank goodness there’s a nice hot tub next to the pool.

Tomorrow is a repeat.

I’m sure it’s good for me. I’m just sure of it….

ManageMyHome.Com Works!

General

Good news on the dryer front!

I didn’t have very high expectations about getting any kind of an answer from managemyhome.com. I posted my question and even sent in a comment referring them to my rant from yesterday. Shortly after that I got a tweet from @managemyhomebob asking if he could help. They sent me in email a short note saying,

Dear Mr Smith,

Thank you for contacting us about your dryer. I’m really surprised to hear that you got routed to people in the Philippines when you pressed the click to chat feature on our website. I’ll definitely let our management know about that. Based on the information you posted in your blogs, it sounds like you’re a real do-it-yourself type of person. One thing you may want to check is the wall vent itself that the dryer is connected to. If it’s blocked at all, it could also cause the problem that you’ve described. Now if your vent exits to the side of your home, you can check to see if it’s clogged by starting the dryer in a cycle and then going outside to check the air flow coming out of the vent. If there’s a lot of air flow, the vent is in good shape. If there’s little to know air flow, it means you have a clogged wall vent and it will need to be cleaned out.

Also, even though the dryers element is getting hot, it may not be getting hot enough and this may also be what’s causing your problems. Most dryers hottest temperatures are between 150-155 degrees. If it’s not getting that hot, then your element may need to be replaced.

Even though all of that had been checked previously, it was good information. Then this morning I got a very lengthy and very informative response with a good action plan from them, plus two followup tweets from @managemyhomebob.

The problem is well on the way to being solved. Good on you, @managemyhomebob for being on twitter!!

My only remaining question:

How is anyone to know from the sears.com website to go over to managemyhome.com to get technical questions answered?

Sears Kenmore Dryer Update: Sears FAILS

General

Today I took the dryer apart to see if I could fix it. While there was a lot of lint on places in the dryer, the exhaust was clean. The heater element works and the dryer gets plenty hot. Plenty of air is circulating. The problem is the dryer turns off before the load is dry.

I went looking for a moisture sensor. Some dryers have a sensor in the exhaust air stream that determines how much moisture is in the air and when that gets to a certain point, the dryer control unit decides that the load is dry enough and proceeds to the next stage which, depending on settings, might be a cool-down stage or shut off and buzz.

Other dryers have a couple of metal strips inside the dryer which, if the clothes are still wet, make an electrical contact. If, after a period of time, the electrical contact is not made, the dryer advances to the next stage.

There doesn’t seem to be any metal strips inside the dryer. The parts diagram doesn’t list a moisture sensor. So what to do next?

On the web page for Sears Parts Direct is a button labeled, “Talk to a Parts Specialist”. I clicked on the button.

A window came up and asked for my phone number along with a button that scheduled the phone call now or sometime in the future. I selected “now” and my phone immediately rang and I was connected to a call center. Based on the accent, the call center was probably in the Philippines.

I explained my problem and asked which part needs to be replaced.

“I’m not qualified to give technical advice,” she responded.

“Well, what do you do as a parts specialist?” I asked. She replied, “If you tell me what part number you need, I can order it for you.” Singularly unhelpful as, if I knew the part number, I can order it online from the web page and don’t need to talk to anyone. She offered to connect me to someone for technical support, though, and I said, “Connect me.”

The call transferred somewhere else, but still with the same accent. I explained my problem again. “I’m not qualified to give technical advice,” she responded. After some discussion it was clear that nowhere in the Sears call center customer support operations was technical support available.

She referred me to managemyhome.com. I went there. On the front page was a box with a button: Ask a question. At the bottom of the page it said that managemyhome.com is brought to me by Sears.

So, I typed in my question (limited to about a hundred characters) in the box labeled “Ask us your toughest question. We can handle it”, and pressed the “Ask It” button. The next page displayed asked me to sign in or sign up if not already registered. I went through the registration process which included a captcha as well as an email response process. But, when I finally got logged in, the question disappeared. I had to re-enter the question, limited to 100 characters.

Pressing the button brought up another page with several more boxes to fill in. That submitted the question. I’m supposed to get an answer in 72 hours, not counting weekends and holidays.

Is all this intended to force me to call for an authorized repair person?

It’s time to go put the dryer back together again.

What Happened To Sears?

Roland's Rambling Random Ruminations

Our Kennmore dryer, bought about eleven years ago, is not working as well as it should. It takes a long time to dry, and when it shuts off and buzzes, the clothes usually aren’t dry and need to go through another cycle. My expectation is that a moisture sensor is going bad rather than the heating element. So, because I was going to be in the area this afternoon, I stopped into the local Sears store at the mall to go to the parts department.

But, there was no parts department. I finally found a young fellow in the major appliance department who said that I needed to go to either (1) sears.com and order the part online, or (2) go to a local appliance repair store and have them order the needed part. He tried to show me where to look on sears.com, however after waiting for about 11 minutes for the website to display, I left the store and went on my way.

How long has it been since I was actually in a Sears store to buy something? I know when we were looking for a new flat panel TV for mother, we stopped into the local Sears store, which took about 5 minutes to find that they didn’t have anything close to what we were looking for and left. In total, I think I could count the number of times in the past five years that I’ve been in a Sears store on the fingers of one hand.

It was obvious as I walked through the store the rest of the general population doesn’t shop there either. The store was completely devoid of customers. I was the only one there and four different sales persons came up as I walked through the store to ask if they could help, including one from the children’s department.

Back in the early 1960’s, F.W. Woolworth decided to get into the big-box discount store business. I think they were the first ones, actually, and their target was Sears. They built what was then considered to be large box buildings in suburbia and sold at a discount much of the Woolworth merchandise and leased out large parts of the store to other discount merchandisers. These stores were called “Woolco” and by the early 1970’s were pretty much known as the place where people went to shop when they were done shopping. Woolco didn’t survive and by the end of the 1970’s, most of their stores were closed and the buildings sold. Some were even sold to Wal-Mart!

I think that Sears has degenerated beyond Woolco as a place to go when you’re done shopping but don’t want to go home. At least in most Woolco stores in those days they had a kind of a food court where you could buy real ice cream and real milkshakes. Sears just stacks stuff on ugly metal racks and the employees wander aimlessly around hoping to waylay a potential customer.

Even an appliance needing a repair is no longer a reason to go into a Sears store.

Random Sunday Thoughts

Church, General, TripleT
  1. One of my Church responsibilities as a member of the Stake High Council is to speak in Sacrament Meeting (communion worship service) in one of the Wards (congregations) on an assigned topic. I enjoy the entire speaking process, including the research, figuring out how to approach the subject, assembling the talk, and delivering it. There are always two High Council speakers and, as I am the more junior, I speak first. Quite often there are one or two youth speakers ahead of me (but sometimes not!) so I need to be fairly flexible on how much time I take for my talk. Today was a speaking day and my assigned topic was “Preparing to Worship”. I had a pretty good talk put together, but then the events in the Sacrament Meeting caused me to completely revise my talk in my head. Despite that, it came together and I left sufficient time for my speaking companion, although I could have pontificated for quite a while longer. The last speaker always has to be the most flexible. On a couple of occasions when I was the last speaker, I’ve been left with less than five minutes and once it was time for the meeting to be finished when my turn came (I just stood, bore a 10 second testimony of our Savior, and sat down).
  2. There’s a teapot tempest about religion going on in our area. It seems that a group calling themselves “The Church of the Firstborn and Heaven’s Gate” recently relocated en masse from Magna, Utah to Ft. Hall on the Shoshone – Bannock Indian reservation. The sect’s leaders consider themselves to be the two witnesses spoken of in the New Testament and one of them says that he is the Holy Ghost and the father of Adam incarnate. They made application for a permit to build a dormitory on their land. It would be a three-story building with about 40 rooms. Granting the permit means granting a zoning variance, meaning that a public hearing was required. The hearing got quite animated with people speaking out because of the things they’ve heard about the group and they didn’t want that sort of thing going on around here. What they’re hearing comes from a former leader in the group who left them and since has been crusading against the sect. They’ve been investigated by every Federal and State agency possible with no findings of any wrong doings. The decision on the variance and the permit has been postponed until late next week. All this would just be amusing except for the wild and almost vicious attacks on the sect being made by some Mormons in the community. All too soon we forget what we went through to gain sufficient freedom to exercise our religious beliefs. They’re law abiding citizens. We may think they are misguided and perhaps deluded, but that doesn’t have any bearing. “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may” (Articles of Faith #11). It’s well for us to remember that!
  3. Those previous two thoughts got rather lengthy. One of the youth speakers today remarked that she somehow had gotten onto the Bishop’s short-list of speakers because every couple of months she’s been asked to speak again. She wondered what she needed to do to get off the list and then proceeded to give a very good talk on friendship. I think she’s still on the short-list!
  4. Every six months we have a Priesthood Leadership Meeting at 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. On the Saturday afternoon preceding the meeting all of the Priesthood Leadership are invited to attend a meeting with a member of the Temple Presidency followed by a session at the Idaho Falls Temple (if everyone came, there would be about 140 men). I enjoy the Chapel meetings because I usually get asked to play the organ for the meeting. That means for about a half an hour I get to be in the Temple and play many of my favorite Hymns and everyone there is quiet, reverent, and listening to the music. Yesterday was the Temple meeting and this morning was the Leadership meeting. I was able to play the organ for both meetings. It’s been a very nice weekend.
  5. Even though it’s Random Sunday Thoughts, it doesn’t all have to be about Church things. For instance, I’ve been working for several days on our hot tub. This is the time of the year when I need to drain the tub and put in new water for the winter. That has been complicated by the fact that a hive or more of yellow-jacket wasps have taken up residence inside the panel where the hot tub controls are located. So I’ve needed first to exterminate the wasps. When I got the panels off, I found a number of very large nests. They’ve all been sprayed, but I noticed today wasps are still making their way into another part of the paneling. According to what I’ve read online, as winter approaches, all the wasps in a hive except the queen die, but she lives to start all over again next year. That means not only spraying the nests to kill as many as possible, but also knocking them down, getting them out, and crushing them before putting them into the trash. This is not fun.
  6. Flu season has not yet started, but the “normal” flu vaccine is available. Most places advertising flu shots (and this isn’t the Swine Flu H1N1 vaccine … that’s still coming) were charging about $25. I saw in the newspaper that the Senior Citizen’s Center was having a health fair and any adult could come in and get a shot for $20. I went and had a much better experience than a couple of years ago. I actually felt and saw nothing. I didn’t even know he was done. I want to find the same guy to do the H1N1 vaccine when it becomes available.
  7. I am very unhappy with all the vicious political attacks going on. The bickering and maneuvering for political advantage (happening regardless of what is right or what is true) needs to stop. Our health insurance system is broken. It isn’t the “best in the world” … far from it. I’ve written to all my congressional delegation expressing my wish for the divisiveness to end and for bipartisan work to begin. It can begin with me. It can begin with them.
  8. I have some fairly strong feelings about the responsibility of companies for their employees. Our labor laws and regulations don’t address, and probably shouldn’t have to address the moral integrity that should be the hallmark of leaders. Nevertheless I was stunned to read about what I consider to be a nefarious exploitation of employees here in our town. A local pharmacy built a new building as they had outgrown their previous location and wanted to focus on pharmacology rather than the usual drugstore merchandizing. In their new location they built two businesses. On the ground floor they developed a retail pharmacy business focusing individual customers. Upstairs they built a wholesale pharmacy business to service institutions in the area. Both businesses were thriving. Last week they announced that they had sold the wholesale business to a larger company out east somewhere for a substantial amount of money and then proceeded to LAY OFF THE 14 EMPLOYEES who worked in the wholesale business. The new company only wanted the customers. They’ll service those customers from existing offices in Utah. I consider this a reprehensible action on the part of the owners. It was their idea and their management that got the business going, but it was those 14 employees who made it work. The owners pocket a substantial chunk of money. The employees who made it possible leave with nothing. There’s something very wrong with this picture. I will NEVER do business with that pharmacy, ever.
  9. At my Rotary Club meeting earlier this week the Engineer for this district in the Idaho State Department of Transportation talked to us about the road work going on in our area. Nina and I have been intrigued by the work going on east of McCammon. I think there needs to be some kind of a website that shows what the end results will be, so I talked with him about that. He said all of that information is in the environmental impact statement, including drawings and elevations of the finished project and that the impact statement should be available online. I went to the website, searched, and found that once the project proceeds past the public comment period and the statement is “approved”, it’s removed from the website. It’s in the form of a PDF (which is not very helpful) and a large file, there are many of projects, so to “save money” they’re removed. That seems kind of short sighted! Someone needs to invent an inexpensive way to convert a PDF into a nice website.
  10. I’ve been trying to think of a third “R” to go along with Rambling Random … something that means thoughts or musings, or similar. Suggestions welcome!

And that’s My Story for this Sunday.