Bosch dishwashers recalled for fire hazard

Over the weekend our Bosch dishwasher began to run in an “infinite loop,” with the countdown timer always showing 1 minute left. This went on for hours. We looked up info on the problem, discovered how to fix it, and successfully repaired our dishwasher. However, I learned this morning that our dishwasher was subject to a recall for this very reason.

From the Consumer Product Safety Commission:

Hazard: An electrical component in certain model dishwashers can overheat, posing a fire hazard to consumers.

Incidents/Injuries: BSH Home Appliances has received 51 reports of incidents, including 30 reports of fires resulting in property damage. No injuries have been reported.

A component on the dishwasher’s control board arced and melted, growing hot enough to potentially cause a fire. Because the dishwasher is quiet, we often run it as we are going to bed. I shudder to think what might have happened if it had caught fire while we were asleep, separating us from our children’s bedrooms!

If you have a Bossh dishwasher whose model number appears on the recall list, STOP USING IT IMMEDIATELY and CALL BOSCH! They will come out and correct the fire hazard for free.

We were very lucky ours wasn’t more serious than it was. Take action before it happens to you!

See these links for more details:
http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2009/Bosch-and-Siemens-Model-Dishwashers-Recalled-by-BSH-Home-Appliances-Corporation-Due-to-Fire-Hazard/

http://www.bosch-home.com/us/support/safety-notices/dishwasher-recall.html

Fixed dishwasher

Bosch dishwasher control board


This past Sunday we noticed our Bosch dishwasher never shut off. It got stuck at the end of the cycle, with one minute showing on the timer for well over two hours. Kelly did some hunting on the Internet and diagnosed the problem as a faulty control board.

More sleuthing turned up a YouTube Video showing not only how to get to the control board, but how to fix it, too! A faulty relay was the culprit, and if one is handy at soldering it is a quick fix. I could also skip the soldering and replace the control board. When my local parts store didn’t have it in stock, I was faced with a choice: I could either wait for a new control board to be delivered or I could wait for a relay to be delivered.
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Going solar!

We are in the process of getting solar PV panels put on our roof, generating our own electricity from the sun. I believe June is the target date for completion. Local solar firm Southern Energy Management is doing the install, which will set us up with a 4kW grid-tie system. It’s not enough to cover all of our electricity needs but considering the shade still on our afternoon rooftop it’s not too bad. We can always cut down a tree or two in the future should we want to boost this output, but that wouldn’t necessarily be green, would it?
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VPS Farm closing up shop

The hosting provider where I host this blog, VPS Farm, is closing up shop in two weeks. The owner is changing jobs and shutting it down. This means I have to find a new provider, and fast, or my handful of readers will be forever lost.

I have some local providers that I can turn to, so I hope to switch over to a new provider soon. With any luck the transition will be seamless but I’m sure a gremlin or two will pop up. Just bear with me. I promise that there isn’t much that can shut me up!

Still here

I know I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog lately but it’s because I’ve been very busy with stuff. The new job is going well but the schedule I’m on doesn’t leave me with much copious free time (TM). I am having to hustle to make things work and it’s been an adjustment but so far I’m making it work.
Kelly left this morning for her three-day session in Greensboro, so my schedule has taken a hit for that, too.

The other blog blocker is caused by books. Seems whenever I request books from the library they all tend to come in at the same time. I got an inter-library loan in from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg library called Escaping the Endless Adolescence, which is living up to its expectations. Soon after, the Charlie LeDuff book Detroit: An American Autopsy, arrived. Because Endless Adolescence wasn’t due back until the end of the month, I read through LeDuff’s book first. Now I’m back into Endless Adolescence again. My reading doesn’t leave much time for other things.

I still have posts to catch up on and hope to get those online as soon as these books have been returned. Life is pretty good, though, all told!

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

Out healthcare system is so very, very broken. I hate patronizing businesses who I know are fleecing me blind.

Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children.About a week later, Stephanie had to ask her mother for $35,000 more so Sean could begin the treatment the doctors had decided was urgent. His condition had worsened rapidly since he had arrived in Houston. He was “sweating and shaking with chills and pains,” Stephanie recalls. “He had a large mass in his chest that was … growing. He was panicked.”

via Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.com.

Mosquito Photonic Fence

Here’s a novel new twist on the old “bug zapper” concept: a laser-shooting Death Star against mosquitoes. Of course Bill Gates had to be involved, right?

In 2007, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation asked Intellectual Ventures to create new technologies that will not only fight malaria but will eventually eliminate this scourge of humanity altogether. Already our team of entomologists, epidemiologists, physicists, and other scientists have come up with innovative approaches that attack the parasite that causes the disease from several angles. Some make it easier to diagnose the disease quickly and accurately. Others destroy the parasites directly. Still others target the mosquitoes that serve as hosts to the parasites and spread malaria from person to person

via Malaria » Intellectual Ventures Lab.

Cheap Thoughts: Telepresence

Speaking of working from home, we have an arrangement here at work that is a pretty interesting use of telepresence tools. One of our developers works remotely but needs to attend occasional meetings. Rather than fly him in and out, we’ve set him up with a Wifi-enabled camera which he can use to pan, tilt, and zoom around the room. All that’s missing is some way for him to drive the camera from room to room and he could be virtually here. The camera isn’t cheap but it easily paid for itself the very first time it kept our developer from traveling.

I was thinking of bringing in my now-unused Roomba vacuum and using that to move the camera around. I could slap a small UPS battery on top to power the camera and interface it with the camera software to let it be controlled remotely.

Another thing that would be useful to telepresence tools would be an additional fisheye-lens camera. This should show the whole room in a separate window while the main camera is pointed somewhere else. When the viewer needs to focus on something or someone in the room, the viewer will know where the main camera needs to be pointed. Better yet, the viewer could simply click on a point on the room image and the main camera would point there. That might make it painless enough that attending a meeting virtually wouldn’t be so much about fiddling with the tools but being able to focus on the meeting itself.

Interesting stuff. I’ll have to see what I can put together to make this work.

Marissa Mayer doesn’t get it

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer recently nixed the company’s work-from-home policy in an effort to build camaraderie:

“Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” read the memo to employees. “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

The goal of Mayer to cure what ails Yahoo: Reviving a moribund and enervated workforce that has struggled to innovate and excel over many years. One of the many problems has been the liberal use of work-from-home policies that have been woefully mismanaged to create a culture that is simply not energized.

Mayer is supposedly some kind of whiz kid, and I’d be more open-minded about this move if it weren’t for one thing: this is an asinine way to lead if I ever heard of it. There’s no shared sacrifice. Mayer doesn’t have to worry about balancing her work and home lives because she brings her home with her to work:

Many others at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ pointed to the nursery Mayer had built — for which she paid personally — next to her office as a perk others at Yahoo do not get.

“I wonder what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set em up in the cube next door?” joked a husband of another employee who will be losing her work-from-home privileges.

The story quoted an anonymous Twitter user agreeing with this tactic …

“Marissa is doing what good leaders do,” wrote one person on Twitter. “Making sure her Yahoo team is communicating & working TOGETHER.”

… but the likely reason this user was not named is because this person doesn’t have a fucking clue what leadership is.

Leadership is not a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do thing. If you ask your team to sacrifice and yet your Little Dumpling gets a playpen palace in your office your team will be stampeding for the exits in a New York second. If Queen Yahoo isn’t willing to set the example for her team then she’s not a good leader.

I don’t know what work-from-home policy is best. Each company and each situation is different. I do know that if you make a drastic change to your employee’s arrangements and continue feathering your own nest then soon you won’t have a team left to lead.

via Despite Yahoo Ban, Most Tech Companies Support Work-From-Home Policies – Kara Swisher – News – AllThingsD.

Work is stabilizing

I’m into week three at the new job and I’m not feeling as overwhelmed as I was the first two weeks. I’m starting to get the hang of it, at least a little bit. I’m confident enough that tomorrow I’m going to interact with my first customer, so that’s a big step.

The schedule is a bit crazy as I mentioned before, but it’s a top-notch team and I’m happy to be a part of it. Perhaps I can find a little time for blogging in-between.