Haley Barbour’s Pardons.

Look at all the murderers, druggies, dealers, and sexual offenders. An unconditional pardon means they can buy guns, vote, work in schools. They have no criminal record now. Would you want a convicted rapist working at your kid’s school? Someone convicted of drug sales? Manufacture of Meth? Murder?

The attorney general is trying to reverse some of these, but it might not happen. What was he thinking? I get that he’s leaving, and won’t be responsible for it, but he completely flushed his credibility. Even in his future job as a lobbyist, this is going to follow. Not to mention making the State of Mississippi hit the news for something negative, AGAIN.

I have one. It was a ten-year anniversary gift from my husband. We’ve had it for seven and a half years. Of course , it’s out of warranty.

One day, all the lights started blinking on the panel, but it kept washing, so I ignored it. Then they started to blink in sequence, and I had to hit cancel before it would run. No problem. Still washes. Then, it quit altogether. So I took apart. Duh. That’s what I do. And in my defense, about 80% of problems are due to corrosion on connectors, so when you take it apart and put it back together, you’ve removed some of the corrosion and it works again.

In most dishwashers (actually, most major appliances), there’s a service guide stuck to it somewhere. This one is behind the kick panel. It tells you how to trouble shoot the unit so you can figure out why the panel is blinking, it’s not washing, rinsing, drying, spinning, or waking you up at three am. It doesn’t take a great deal of brains to test the panel, but it does require a multimeter, which does. I tested the panel. You ohm out all the buttons. If all the buttons pass, replace the computer board. Well all the buttons passed, so I replaced the computer. $120. It ran once. So I put the old computer back in, and it ran once. New one, nothing. Old one, nothing.

So I went back to my service sheet, and read that it’s better to test the buttons using a diode tester on the multimeter instead of the ohmmeter. I tested the panel again, and this time it said one of the buttons was bad. This pissed me off, because the $120 computer is non-returnable.

But wait! If one of the buttons is bad, maybe I can bypass the button. It wasn’t the start button, it was the soak and scour button. I don’t need that one! This is where David really started to give me funny looks. I reminded him that I’m the one the does the dishes, and the other option is to buy a new dishwasher, so just let me play with the damn thing. I managed to figure out which diode in the panel wasn’t working and “removed” the button and the diode from the circuit with a razor blade.

Put it all together, and BLAM! It worked!

The problem now is that it doesn’t STOP working. Once it washes rinses and dries, it starts all over again. Okay, I can live with the, set a timer, catch it in the dry cycle and turn it off. This worked one time.

I came to the unpleasant realization that the panel needed to be replaced. Well, the dishwasher is 7 years old, and that’s the part you can’t find easily any more. If it is in stock, in white (because I wanted black) it’s $160.

That would mean I have $280 in a dishwasher that’s out of warranty. Resigned, I got out my credit card….

Check Ebay first! came the tiny little voice that either makes me look brilliant or brings the demons closer. Fine. Ebay. For a dishwasher panel. Seriously? Who sells JUST the panel off an old dishwasher?

Whirlpool Console assemby 8269313 Sale price: $7.00 Estimated delivery: 3-7 business days Shipping & Handling: Standard Shipping $8.00

It should be here this week! Yay! Dishwasher!

Sadly, I have really struggled with NaBloPoMo this year, as you can see. I frequently think about what I should write here, and I never come up with anything. One of the problems with my depression is a complete lack of motivation. I just don’t care enough about, well, anything. Currently, one of the muscles in my neck is spasming, so I’ve taken some drugs and will probably be incoherent shortly. I think I’ll go back to bed.

In an effort to get back on track, I’m actually going to FINISH NaBloPoMo. I might not get one done every day, but I am giving myself the deadline of December 31st to finish. I’m back dating the post time so I can keep track of them, but including the actual write date so you can see how far behind I am.

Another fun side effect is that I’m always hungry. I can handle this, except it also causes the shakes and dizziness you get along with being really heavy. So today I worked for ten minutes, and had to go sit down. Up again, sit down again. It was not a very productive day.

Usually, the body adapts to new meds and the side effects go away. I really really hope this is the case. If it hasn’t gone away in a few weeks, I’m going to have to find something else.