Then the other washer went, so I went to the truck stop...

The last few times I'd used the clothes washer the clothes seemed wetter than the spin-dry should have left them. Then the washer went *THUMP* *THUMP *THUMP* the last time. Uh oh. Called appliance dealer to see what a repair might involve. It would involve, at a minimum, about $700. The advice was to replace since it wouldn't be much more and then everything would be new.

We did that. A friend recommended a different dealer in town (one that I had pretty much forgotten existed) but I felt like the service was better or at least lower pressure on sales ("We don't need fancy. We just need clean." "OK.") and went with that. The dryer is fine, but of course this is a stacked setup that must be stacked due to location of fixture and such. There are stacking kits. But those only within brand and then often only within model. So now we have a new washer, with an older dryer, separated by a bit of old carpeting. The installers decided the best or at least easiest course of action after that was a real Red Green solution: duct tape. Yes, really.

Jay and I both decided that would simply Not Do. Even with alleged vibration sensing and damping, trusting things to six strips of duct tape seemed insane. So I went to the truck stop and bought a come-along strap setup and wrapped that around the washer-dryer combo. A few more carpet scraps as things were ratcheted tight and I feel a lot better about things.

Happy 1952? Or maybe 1953.

The first Saturday of the year was the $WORKPLACE Christmas party. As usual, there was a drawing for employees, and prizes handed out. Many were smaller items ("A t-shirt and a water bottle.") and there were various larger items, including a couple grills, a couple Keurig machines, a nice KitchenAid stand mixer, and a couple TVs. One TV was first (I suspect it was a 720p cheapie) and the other, a 40 inch Vizio 'Smart' TV was last.

Having been to a few of these and having gotten a (right, proper non-DRM-ed yay!) Keurig a couple years ago I didn't expect much and was mainly hoping not to get stuck with another shirt I'd likely never wear and a water bottle I'd likely never use. Despite not really having a space for it, I'd not have minded walking away with the KithenAid mixer one little bit. I was happy to see others get the grills. But (you're way ahead of me, aren't you?) but things went differently from that. The very last name pulled out for the drawing? For the big fancy TV? Was mine.

And then I had to go work, so it was just "Go home, unload, go to work." and then... well the living room has been cluttered for ages. It didn't make sense to even unpack the set until there was a place for it to go. And then there was dealing with the clothes washer and more work and things sat. And like with the Keurig the question came up if I was enjoying the new set yet and I've not learned to just lie and say "Yes, thank you." even yet.

A few days ago I had just enough energy to clean up things enough to have space for the set and assembled it and powered it up and... discovered that the set could deal with wifi, but didn't understand some people use long, secure passwords. And then I had this three-day weekend... which was unpleasant as I spent the majority of it Quite Ill Indeed. But this weekend I did finally move a network cable (need to re-arrange more, but that got the set going) and watched a couple short youtube bits on the big screen.

This morning I finally watched my first full TV show on the set. This is a 40 inch, HD, 1080p color, stereo, widescreen and all that. So my first full program? The Spike Jones Show, from New Year's Eve(?) 1952 in glorious B&W, 4:3 aspect ratio and monaural sound. I don't try to do this sort of thing, it just happens. So help me, I thought I'd posted about once setting up audio streaming on Linux and streaming mp3's of cylinder recordings, but I haven't found that post despite a couple hours and multiple search engines. Something is screwy and I hope it's not me this time.