Getting started on my summer break

My last exam of the semester was a week ago. I computed grades over the weekend and posted them on Tuesday. With that I entered my summer break. And that means a few days wondering what am I supposed to be doing? So I open the to-do list and see what looks urgent or interesting.

At the top of the list... A few weeks ago I noticed my dishwasher must be leaking. I had stains on the top of the clothes washer below it. So when necessary I've been washing dishes by hand (and using the dishwasher as a drainboard). My handyman said the problem is one that can't be fixed. Time for a new one. Though a run of over 20 years on this one isn't bad. He also said the water damage to the floor is not enough to need to rip it out.

Now to put serious effort into choosing a new one. When I walk into the big appliance stores (Lowe's, Home Depot, Best Buy around here) I see displays of dishwashers ranging from the inexpensive ($300) on up to quite expensive ($1700). How do I decide what to get? Not much in the store will help with that, though I did get a list from one place of the models that have an almond facade, or now known as "bisque." I'm sure that color choice dates me, but the refrigerator is that color and the counter is pretty close.

So back home to the internet to search for "dishwasher reviews." That's when I find a problem. The review sites don't have reviews for the models in the stores. And usually the reviewed models are the most expensive ones (though one review said we don't think this model is any good, but it is really inexpensive so we designate it a buy of the year).

Those big appliance stores do have customer reviews for the models they carry, but I wonder how meaningful they are. The reviews on one store's site tend to be similar to "This dishwasher is great! I've used it once and it got my dishes really clean!" On another store's site the reviews were "I would/would not recommend this product to a friend."

So what to do?

Of course, now when I visit news sites the sidebar ads are for dishwashers. I'll let you decide whether that is better or worse than getting lots of ads for a diet regimen I actually did six months ago.

Another problem needing attention is my little netbook computer, the one I take when I travel and use to post my travelogues to this blog. When at home I use it only to pull up bank statements so I can balance the checkbook at the table instead of the desk. This netbook is now quite slow, becoming quite motionless about the time I get the bank statement displayed. I started it once and only opened the Task Manager, which displays percents of CPU and memory being used. That showed memory at 65%, which soon climbed to 95%. No wonder nothing would work. I reinstalled the virus software, but that hasn't found anything. I currently have that scanning the whole disk, but it is very slow and if I don't periodically touch the fingerpad the computer will go to sleep. I also installed a register cleaner. It found hundreds of dead entries in the registry, but it is still slow.

I talked to Geek Squad about repairs. They said for $200 we will do all these wonderful things for it. What if I don't need all those things? Well, just to bring it in will be $199. Since the computer cost only $300 I'm reluctant to spend $200 on it. Another place wouldn't quote a repair rate. They said they would do free diagnostics and then give me an estimate.

The weather is warming up. I did my bike ride this morning while it was cool, though the high today was only 80F.