It's the Two Laws of the Modern Household:
1. All plumbing will eventually leak, and
2. All appliances will eventually fail.
We had trouble this summer with our refrigerator. Similar trouble to before: the door gasket on the freezer compartment partially fell off, but it wasn't visible, because the freezer is on the bottom. Plus smaller children tend to open the freezer, and then not quite close it completely, which isn't very visible either.
So humid air got into the freezer compartment, condensed, froze, and blocked the air flow up to the refrigerator compartment. Yes, it has a fan to send the cold air up.
We didn't lose much food, because we have a chest freezer, and several coolers. We also had three bags of ice left over from the church picnic. I did find that one cooler had lost its drain plug, but I was able to dig through our hardware stash and find a rubber cap that fit. I put it into the hole from the inside, so that pressure on it would only push it in more tightly.
Our dehumidifier also was not working well...two days after the warranty expired. But apparently we won the dehumidifier self-destruct lottery, because after a couple of days it started working normally again.
I say "self-destruct" facetiously, but really I do think in some cases these electronic appliances are designed to quit working prematurely.
Better engineering also can lead to products being designed to just barely survive the warranty period, mechanically.
If I were an unscrupulous manufacturer, I would direct some of my advertising budget into making a small percentage of my products built so well that they would last for years and years. Our refrigerator has a 10-digit model number, with both digits and letters. I have to wonder what information is being encoded in it.
Friends of ours moved into a new house two years ago, and since then have had to replace four major appliances, and have had half a dozen service calls on a fifth.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Friday, September 20, 2019
The other two
Since I've been digging into some of the presidential candidates' campaign promises for health insurance and health care, I decided I might as well look at Buttigieg's and Harris's as well.
According to Buttigieg's campaign site, he is proposing Medicare for All Who Want It, as a public option. Supposedly this will put pressure on private health insurers to improve their products and service. His site says that over time, however, this will propel a transition to Medicare For All.
Having a public health insurance option and forcing private health insurers to compete against it is also a feature of Biden's plan. However, the playing field is clearly not level in such a scenario, being heavily tilted in favor of the government program, which can draw on tax dollars and practically write its own rules. I'm really getting tired of counting the avenues through which Democrats have attacked, are attacking, and are saying that they will attack in the future, private health insurance.
Not that I think private health insurance companies are good; but on the whole they can do much less damage than a nationalized bureaucracy can. The right to vote with your wallet is a very important one.
Another similarity between Buttigieg and Biden is that their plans include expanding automatic enrollments of people in government health programs. So much for Privacy and Choice.
Kamala Harris, according to her campaign site, is proposing a ten-year transition to Medicare For All, with automatic enrollment of newborns! Under her plan, some of the Medicare plans will be offered by private insurers. She promises to keep them on a very tight leash.
The ability of any of these candidates to reform health insurance coverage is going to be very limited, unless the Democrats can recapture the Senate, since the President does not have the power to legislate. I don't know how many seats will be up for grabs in 2020.
I also found an article on the American Medical Association site that describes some of their resolutions. Apparently the AMA supports the Affordable Care Act, proposes some changes to it--including fixing the "family glitch", hopes for universal health care coverage, and has concerns about the costs of Medicare For All--up to $32 trillion dollars in increased federal spending over ten years?!? There are some older articles about dealing with the 2017 changes in Medicare payments, and how doctors can navigate the pay-for-performance structure.
The problem with performance incentives for doctors is that they lead to compliance directives for patients...so much for Privacy and Choice...again.
I was looking at the AMA site because I believe that health care costs could be lower if the supply of doctors was larger. Some years ago, I looked at the doctors-to-population ratios of the United States and a couple of other countries. The United States was not that bad, but seemed to be not all that great, either.
According to Buttigieg's campaign site, he is proposing Medicare for All Who Want It, as a public option. Supposedly this will put pressure on private health insurers to improve their products and service. His site says that over time, however, this will propel a transition to Medicare For All.
Having a public health insurance option and forcing private health insurers to compete against it is also a feature of Biden's plan. However, the playing field is clearly not level in such a scenario, being heavily tilted in favor of the government program, which can draw on tax dollars and practically write its own rules. I'm really getting tired of counting the avenues through which Democrats have attacked, are attacking, and are saying that they will attack in the future, private health insurance.
Not that I think private health insurance companies are good; but on the whole they can do much less damage than a nationalized bureaucracy can. The right to vote with your wallet is a very important one.
Another similarity between Buttigieg and Biden is that their plans include expanding automatic enrollments of people in government health programs. So much for Privacy and Choice.
Kamala Harris, according to her campaign site, is proposing a ten-year transition to Medicare For All, with automatic enrollment of newborns! Under her plan, some of the Medicare plans will be offered by private insurers. She promises to keep them on a very tight leash.
The ability of any of these candidates to reform health insurance coverage is going to be very limited, unless the Democrats can recapture the Senate, since the President does not have the power to legislate. I don't know how many seats will be up for grabs in 2020.
I also found an article on the American Medical Association site that describes some of their resolutions. Apparently the AMA supports the Affordable Care Act, proposes some changes to it--including fixing the "family glitch", hopes for universal health care coverage, and has concerns about the costs of Medicare For All--up to $32 trillion dollars in increased federal spending over ten years?!? There are some older articles about dealing with the 2017 changes in Medicare payments, and how doctors can navigate the pay-for-performance structure.
The problem with performance incentives for doctors is that they lead to compliance directives for patients...so much for Privacy and Choice...again.
I was looking at the AMA site because I believe that health care costs could be lower if the supply of doctors was larger. Some years ago, I looked at the doctors-to-population ratios of the United States and a couple of other countries. The United States was not that bad, but seemed to be not all that great, either.
Thursday, September 19, 2019
'Tis the season...
...for the annual letter from the health insurance company saying, "If you like your plan, too bad, because we're discontinuing it."
Incredibly, last summer Biden stepped very close to repeating Obama's "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan" promise. From the health care page on his campaign site, I see that Biden is proposing to build on the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare, by increasing subsidies for people buying insurance on the exchanges, and greatly expanding Medicare, and increasing automatic enrollments into Medicaid.
Did you catch that bit? --Increasing subsidies for people buying insurance on the exchanges. These people are already eligible for subsidies, up to an income limit of 400% of the federal poverty level. He wants to increase the subsidies, and increase the income limits.
As for the people caught by the "family glitch" that I've already written about, all Biden is offering is a chance to buy into a government health plan. No, thanks. And Mr. Biden, don't stand too close to me, or you'll get badly scalded by the steam that is coming out of my ears.
In other health insurance news, I found an older post by The Silicon Graybeard that outlines some of the issues with Obamacare quite well. The ACA is very long and complex, and much of what it did was to amend several other long and complex pre-existing laws, including the Social Security Act, in an intricate sort of way. That is part of why it is very difficult to repeal.
His description of the trade-offs between efficiency and responsiveness is by itself well worth reading; it is an issue that I run into all the time as a mother.
Incredibly, last summer Biden stepped very close to repeating Obama's "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan" promise. From the health care page on his campaign site, I see that Biden is proposing to build on the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare, by increasing subsidies for people buying insurance on the exchanges, and greatly expanding Medicare, and increasing automatic enrollments into Medicaid.
Did you catch that bit? --Increasing subsidies for people buying insurance on the exchanges. These people are already eligible for subsidies, up to an income limit of 400% of the federal poverty level. He wants to increase the subsidies, and increase the income limits.
As for the people caught by the "family glitch" that I've already written about, all Biden is offering is a chance to buy into a government health plan. No, thanks. And Mr. Biden, don't stand too close to me, or you'll get badly scalded by the steam that is coming out of my ears.
In other health insurance news, I found an older post by The Silicon Graybeard that outlines some of the issues with Obamacare quite well. The ACA is very long and complex, and much of what it did was to amend several other long and complex pre-existing laws, including the Social Security Act, in an intricate sort of way. That is part of why it is very difficult to repeal.
His description of the trade-offs between efficiency and responsiveness is by itself well worth reading; it is an issue that I run into all the time as a mother.
Monday, September 16, 2019
Core dump
As I was taking my Sabbath rest, I picked up my husband's copy of David Allen's Making It All Work and read a bit. Allen is the creator of the Getting Things Done method of self-management.
According to Allen, the biggest obstacle to productivity is all the thoughts of undone tasks that are floating around in our heads; the mind won't let go of them until it knows they are safely done, or at least written down.
So his first step in Getting Things Done is to write all these tasks and projects down in a list.
This seemed like a good idea to me; I have a system where I capture most of my to-dos, but some of them slip away before I can write them down, and others have gotten left behind in the flow of life and written notes.
So I started my list, and I ended up with over two hundred things that I have been thinking about doing. Many of them are quick, five-minute tasks, and some are full-scale projects.
If they were all five-minute projects, it would take me only 17 hours to complete them all, not including the time spent on transitions, equipping, interruptions, and clean-up.
According to Allen, the biggest obstacle to productivity is all the thoughts of undone tasks that are floating around in our heads; the mind won't let go of them until it knows they are safely done, or at least written down.
So his first step in Getting Things Done is to write all these tasks and projects down in a list.
This seemed like a good idea to me; I have a system where I capture most of my to-dos, but some of them slip away before I can write them down, and others have gotten left behind in the flow of life and written notes.
So I started my list, and I ended up with over two hundred things that I have been thinking about doing. Many of them are quick, five-minute tasks, and some are full-scale projects.
If they were all five-minute projects, it would take me only 17 hours to complete them all, not including the time spent on transitions, equipping, interruptions, and clean-up.
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Caramel popcorn without corn syrup
A child wanted to make caramel popcorn, but we were out of corn syrup, so I found a recipe online:
Caramel popcorn
10 Cups popped corn
1 Cup (2 sticks) butter
1 Cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Melt the butter in a saucepan, mix in the brown sugar, and bring to boil on medium heat. Boil for 4 minutes without stirring. Add the vanilla and boil for one more minute. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda. Pour over popcorn and stir to coat.
-----------------------------
That is the full recipe. What I do is to halve the caramel part of it, to get caramel popcorn that is less gooey and sweet and liable to stick to little teeth. I leave out the baking soda, which makes the caramel foamy and more spreadable. If needed, caramel popcorn can be put over low heat in a pot on the stove or a pan in the oven to soften the caramel and help it spread; stir as needed.
-----------------------------
We also accidentally tried a version with 1/2 Cup butter to 1 Cup brown sugar. This made a very hard caramel, almost like peanut brittle without the peanuts.
Caramel popcorn
10 Cups popped corn
1 Cup (2 sticks) butter
1 Cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Melt the butter in a saucepan, mix in the brown sugar, and bring to boil on medium heat. Boil for 4 minutes without stirring. Add the vanilla and boil for one more minute. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda. Pour over popcorn and stir to coat.
-----------------------------
That is the full recipe. What I do is to halve the caramel part of it, to get caramel popcorn that is less gooey and sweet and liable to stick to little teeth. I leave out the baking soda, which makes the caramel foamy and more spreadable. If needed, caramel popcorn can be put over low heat in a pot on the stove or a pan in the oven to soften the caramel and help it spread; stir as needed.
-----------------------------
We also accidentally tried a version with 1/2 Cup butter to 1 Cup brown sugar. This made a very hard caramel, almost like peanut brittle without the peanuts.
Monday, September 9, 2019
How to do something that you don't have time for
Three ways:
1. The Gordon MacDonald way (from Ordering Your Private World): schedule it far in advance, and let the other obligations flow around it.
2. What I am doing now: give it a temporary boost to top priority, and do it before everything else.
3. What I should be doing: work faster to get everything else done, to make time for it.
1. The Gordon MacDonald way (from Ordering Your Private World): schedule it far in advance, and let the other obligations flow around it.
2. What I am doing now: give it a temporary boost to top priority, and do it before everything else.
3. What I should be doing: work faster to get everything else done, to make time for it.
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Fix it or lose it
I've been playing a game around the house that I call "Fix It or Lose It". This is for our possessions within the house, not for the house itself.
So far I have repaired a wooden toy and a child's rocking chair, and I have decided not to repair (or re-repair) another wooden toy and another chair, because I couldn't fix them well enough for them to last much longer.
Repairs are not always something that you can just push through on the spot. Sometimes you have to wait for the right time, energy, parts, tools, or ideas. For the rocking chair, that meant not fixing it first thing in the morning yesterday; I didn't have the energy. Later in the day, I went back to it and everything came together without too much trouble.
So far I have repaired a wooden toy and a child's rocking chair, and I have decided not to repair (or re-repair) another wooden toy and another chair, because I couldn't fix them well enough for them to last much longer.
Repairs are not always something that you can just push through on the spot. Sometimes you have to wait for the right time, energy, parts, tools, or ideas. For the rocking chair, that meant not fixing it first thing in the morning yesterday; I didn't have the energy. Later in the day, I went back to it and everything came together without too much trouble.
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