Appliance of Ignorance
You know how it goes - the temperature rises to the point that you can't sleep at night, even with the fan on, so you give up and turn on the air conditioner. This is excitement time - will it work or not? This year I was not hopeful as our air conditioner is frankly an ancient piece of crap and probably wasn't improved by the frozen trees that fell on it during the winter. Sure enough, although air came out of the vents it wasn't cold air, which is kind of the point of air conditioning. I duly went out to inspect the beast with a flashlight. This is a necessary but utterly pointless part of the home maintenance ritual - I looked for obvious signs of trauma (wires hanging off, and the like) but since my knowledge of domestic heating and cooling can be summarized in three words (absolutely fuck all) I was not about to start dismembering the bastard. I did notice a lot of big spiders living in it and it occurred to me that they might have eaten some important part of its insides.
So it was time to call in the experts. This is always an adventure - you might as well wear a t-shirt with the words "I know nothing about {insert nature of problem} - please come into my house and attempt to fuck me in the arse financially" on it. I am a big believer in information - if you don't want the guy you call out to lubricate and attempt to penetrate you, it helps to know what the problem is ahead of time. This means ploughing through numerous internet sites looking for similar problems. Sometimes this works, but you don't get very far with a list of symptoms like "doesn't go cold" so you need to call out someone in whom you have some confidence.
I used to like recommendations from other people but after a while you realize that lots of other people are dickheads, and the person they called "cheap and quick" would better be described as "incompetent and stupid". The other approach is to hire someone with a big name and advertising budget, on the assumption that they have a reputation to protect; in reality they have lots of overheads to meet, which means they basically have to screw you to survive.
Cars are probably the worst area for getting screwed. I used to be able to lift the hood and work on my engine - all you had to do was buy the manual and a few tools. It helped that my first car was a worthless pile of shit, and therefore the downside of not getting it back together again was pretty small. Nowadays they just plug it into a computer and give you a big fat quote to replace some obscure device that you've never heard of. [The worst part with cars is that the things that go wrong are the result of features that no sane person would require. If you need sensors to back up your car you shouldn't even be driving. What happened to learning how to judge a space and park in it, smegma-brain?]
Anyway, the air conditioner is back on - the problem was trivial and fixed for nothing. However the guy who looked at it did confirm my initial diagnosis of "ancient piece of crap" and it will probably die in a year or so. Then I just have to decide "repair or replace?" When we asked for the quote for a new one, the salesman reached for the lubricant, so I'll be putting that off as long as I can...
Copyright 2007 Edward Bison
So it was time to call in the experts. This is always an adventure - you might as well wear a t-shirt with the words "I know nothing about {insert nature of problem} - please come into my house and attempt to fuck me in the arse financially" on it. I am a big believer in information - if you don't want the guy you call out to lubricate and attempt to penetrate you, it helps to know what the problem is ahead of time. This means ploughing through numerous internet sites looking for similar problems. Sometimes this works, but you don't get very far with a list of symptoms like "doesn't go cold" so you need to call out someone in whom you have some confidence.
I used to like recommendations from other people but after a while you realize that lots of other people are dickheads, and the person they called "cheap and quick" would better be described as "incompetent and stupid". The other approach is to hire someone with a big name and advertising budget, on the assumption that they have a reputation to protect; in reality they have lots of overheads to meet, which means they basically have to screw you to survive.
Cars are probably the worst area for getting screwed. I used to be able to lift the hood and work on my engine - all you had to do was buy the manual and a few tools. It helped that my first car was a worthless pile of shit, and therefore the downside of not getting it back together again was pretty small. Nowadays they just plug it into a computer and give you a big fat quote to replace some obscure device that you've never heard of. [The worst part with cars is that the things that go wrong are the result of features that no sane person would require. If you need sensors to back up your car you shouldn't even be driving. What happened to learning how to judge a space and park in it, smegma-brain?]
Anyway, the air conditioner is back on - the problem was trivial and fixed for nothing. However the guy who looked at it did confirm my initial diagnosis of "ancient piece of crap" and it will probably die in a year or so. Then I just have to decide "repair or replace?" When we asked for the quote for a new one, the salesman reached for the lubricant, so I'll be putting that off as long as I can...
Copyright 2007 Edward Bison
posted by Mr Bison at
7:10 AM
<< Home