Bill Roper's Journal

But only sporadically at the moment, at least in our water heater.

You may recall from earlier posts that our water heater had developed the annoying habit of not working from time to time, blinking out the code that indicated "upper sensor failure". It's apparently endemic on this particular model of gas water heater. But if we went downstairs and lighted the pilot light again, the water heater would usually start working again for months at a time. And I figured I'd nurse it along a while longer, because it really wasn't that old, although I was really pretty disgusted with the people who actually made the water heater for Whirlpool for selling something with such a lovely little fault.

When cleaning out one of my file cabinets, I found that I had actually bought an extended warranty from Lowe's when I bought the hot water heater. So the next time that it failed, I resolved to call in and get this thing fixed.

Tuesday morning, we woke up to a blinking hot water heater and a distinct shortage of hot water.

So I called. I explained to them that I had an upper sensor failure, they agreed that the water heater was covered, and that they would send a tech out within two days. They even gave me a number to call to find out what was happening and sent me an email saying I'd be contacted to let me know when he'd be coming.

When I hadn't heard anything by Wed. night, I decided to call and leave a message. This failed, as the voicemail box was full. But the fellow saw the call and ringed me back around 10 PM, shortly after I'd called, which I took as a good sign. He said he'd be there by about noon on Thurs. and that he'd call a half-hour ahead.

He actually got here around 1 PM, which was ok. And went down and promptly reset and restarted the hot water heater as I explained about the blinking light that was blinking out the code for "upper sensor failure" and how there was much documentation about this on the Internet. And he kept saying that he'd never heard of such a thing and had never replaced one of those sensors. And he asked how long it took to fail again after being restarted.

Well, the answer lately had been "less than 12 hours", but I don't exactly stand there in the basement and wait for it to fail, nor do I run downstairs to check it on an hourly basis. So he left and said he'd call back at 3 PM to see if it had failed.

When he hadn't called by 4:30, I called him back and let him know that we were happily blinking out the failure code again. He said he would have to order a part and it would be three business days before the water heater could be fixed at the earliest.

Note that this would take us to next Tuesday before the part arrived, which would mean a minimum of a week of making hot water one tankful at a time. This seemed pretty suboptimal for fixing something which we'd known had failed the preceding Tuesday and which is one of those necessary systems.

So I called the warranty number again and complained, pointing out that I had told them what the problem was on Tuesday and that they could have ordered the stupid part at that point. That I hadn't gotten a call back from the tech and that by now it was too late to order a part from the east coast, wasting yet more time.

And then I spoke to a supervisor who promised to expedite the part order. We'll see what "expedite" ends up meaning. This morning we got a call back from the warranty company saying that the order had been expedited, followed by a call from the tech who told me to call him when the part arrived here and that he'd come install it. (I think he was not entirely happy with the fact that I had ratted him out to the warranty company for not calling back as promised. I was not entirely happy either, so that seemed fair enough.)

In the meantime, I just went back down to the basement and lit the water heater again so that we can have enough hot water to shower in tomorrow morning.

*sigh*

On Monday morning, I got a phone call from Discover. Apparently, someone breached the Walmart.com site, cracked into my account, and tried to place a fraudulent order. This meant that Discover canceled my card and issued me a new number. Getting the number and the cards from Discover proved to be a tougher problem, as I didn't have them by Thursday or Friday and all of my autobilling stuff is tied to that card. No, I couldn't get the number over the phone, I had to wait for the cards and watch payments start bouncing.

So the cards arrived on Saturday, by which time the Chicago Tribune and I-PASS payments had already bounced. Fixing the Tribune was easy, as their website worked flawlessly.

The I-PASS phone robot, however, seemed confused. And it was. When I gave up and called the customer support number, I discovered that my transponder and daisy_knotwise's that were supposed to have been linked into a single account actually weren't. Supposedly, they are now.

Fixing up the guys who handle our burglar alarm -- also pretty easy.

Comcast, though, was completely hopeless. When I tried to update the account using the phone robot, it didn't actually update the autopay feature -- it charged a month of service to my card. I tried to log on using the website, but you can't create an account there unless you have a Comcast.Net e-mail address. I don't, nor will I. When you try to send feedback on the website using Google Chrome, it fails, claiming that you haven't filled in the description section. I had.

Meanwhile, as I went on hold to talk to a representative, I was thrown out of the queue at least three times. Then I was put on hold by a rep and thrown to the back of the queue again. Then I was put on hold by a rep who went to talk to her supervisor and thrown to the back of the queue again. Then I got a rep who explained to me that once the autopay info was cleared by a live rep, it would take a day before the phone tree would accept new info.

Meanwhile, I'd gone into chat with a representative who created an account for me at my e-mail address and said that I'd see an e-mail with the details in an hour. It's still not here six hours later, nor is it in my spam bucket.

Meanwhile, the previously mentioned supervisor actually called back, entered my info in the computer, and gave me a service credit for my trouble. This probably won't stop me from switching away from Comcast due to their decision to scramble all of the digital versions of the channels that I used to receive in clear on Expanded Basic. But it was progress.

Then there was Sprint. They had my e-mail address entered incorrectly by someone who spelled "filker" with a "ph". Needless to say, that wasn't me. Supposedly I am getting an e-mail from them as I reset my account, but that hasn't shown up in six hours, so I'm thinking that isn't happening either. And that's preventing me from fixing the autopay feature there.

So far, the only thing that's worked absolutely seamlessly is the TribCo website.

And I still have three to go, counting Sprint.

Ack!

Or maybe I had a friend. Some days, it can be hard to tell.

A few months ago, he wondered cryptically in a post on my friends list about why it is that people with different political opinions than his who he enjoys discussing things with eventually get tired of talking to him on the subject and wander off in varying degrees of either silence or huffiness. I'm guessing, given the timing, that I was the particular person referenced in that post. (Cue Carly Simon and "You're So Vain".)

And today, I got a little condescension bomb from him on a dead thread. And it reminded me of why I walk away from these conversations with some people.

Because, as daisy_knotwise frequently reminds me, "What's the point?"

I have lots of opinions myself. I like to believe that they're founded in data. I even see that I've occasionally been known to change my opinion given fresh data to look at. (No, I don't feel like getting into examples right now. Take my word for it for once, ok?)

But, you know, I am just sick to death of condescension. Condescension was what got me to walk away from a particular mailing list that I was on, prompting the comment that I reference earlier in this post.

I do my best to argue honestly. I will put out a proposition or argue with someone else's proposition, but I generally try to start from a basis of fact. I assume -- until reasonably proven otherwise -- that the other person is also interested in facts. I have been known to make suggestions to liberal partisans on how to improve their arguments, because I truly believe that we are all better off if we can discuss these things rationally. I've told conservative partisans to knock off the name calling, because it's counter-productive. (I don't make that argument to my liberal friends, because I'm pretty firmly convinced it would do no good. Maybe I'm wrong.)

And there are days when all this is extremely frustrating.

This is one of those days.

It's certainly being interesting these last couple of days. Yesterday, we got to read about Governor Rod's plan to put speed cameras on the Interstate highways to catch folks doing more than 15 MPH over the limit. And it will pay for more state police! That's good, right? Who could argue with that?

Of course, if it works, then we'll need to reset the cameras, because we're not raising enough money. And if you think that won't happen, I'll remind you that when they initially enacted Illinois' seat belt law, we were assured that you would never, ever be stopped just for a seat belt violation.

(I think you're generally an idiot if you're driving without a seat belt, just for the record. And I think that cruising at 80 MPH on the Interstate is generally a bad idea. I also think our speed limits are set absurdly low.)

Then there's John Kass' story about how a local fellow with lots of clout managed to get ComEd to drop a generator off in his driveway during this week's power outage. It's good to be the king!

And today, John Edwards has finally fessed up (at least in part) about his little affair, making it safe for major media outlets to mention it.

Now, honestly, I wouldn't much care if Edwards had an "arrangement" with his wife. He'd neither be the first person nor the last person in the world to do so. And maybe he did. I wouldn't think of that as being disqualifying for high office.

But having such a relationship when you -- the candidate who is running for high office -- clearly believe that it's disqualifying for high office shows incredibly bad judgment.

And I find having such rotten judgment to be pretty clearly disqualifying.

And what ties these three stories together?

In my opinion, the assumption that Rod, Pool Boy (and Mayor Daley), and John make that we're all a bunch of idiots and they can get away with anything they damn well please.

The sadder thing is: they're usually right.