Things aren't built to last these days...

Wow, things really aren't built to last as long as they used to. So far in the past month we've either replaced or repaired our TV (a Samsung LN46A650), our Microwave (a Panasonic NNSA647B), and our water heater.

We've had the TV for about two years, but it started doing this thing where when you turn it on, it would turn itself off and on a few times before ever showing any audio or video. At first it'd turn off/on about once or twice, but gradually got worse... I counted as much as 13 times once of it shutting itself off and coming back on again, but I'm sure there was a time when it did it even more, I just got tired of counting. Good thing we paid for the extended warranty from Fry's when we bought it, so we were able to get it fixed for free.

Our microwave was about three years old and then one day I noticed it wouldn't heat anything at all. A few days later, it would give an H97 error message. We ended up just buying a new one. Our previous microwave before the Panasonic lasted probably about 27 years... and still worked when we got rid of it, but just took longer to heat things up.

I'm not sure what was wrong with our water heater. It was leaking or something, but we got that fixed too.

Seems like something else will fall apart soon too - our washing machine. It is terribly loud and sounds like a jet about to take off. It wasn't so loud just a few months ago. We haven't had this washer and dryer for very long, probably just about three years as well. The dryer already had to be repaired after about a year because it made this loud banging noise and now it looks like the washer will have to get fixed next. Our previous washer and dryer probably lasted about 25+ years as well.

Just seems like things these days just aren't built as well as they used to be.

10/10/10!

I was planning on posting this at 10:10, but I wanted to update at a bunch of other places too, so I'm picking the one (probably Facebook or Twitter) where I'd want it to be.

Of course, maybe I can set up something to post automatically to ping.fm that'll go everywhere simultaneously, but nah. Anyway, happy 10/10/10, everybody!

Our grass is dying!

Well, a while back we fired our gardener, bought an electric mower and started mowing the lawn ourselves, but now our grass is dying! I have no idea how our neighbors can keep their grass alive with the watering restrictions they set for our neighborhood... my mom thinks the neighbors are cheating a little.

Or maybe our sprinklers are busted... it happens from time to time, I don't really pay any attention to them when they come on.

Maybe it's time for an alternative to grass. Pebbles, maybe? Artificial turf? Hmm.

How do you keep your room cool?

It's summer once again and here in So Cal, it can get into the 100s of degrees Fahrenheit. Thankfully, we haven't had very many of those days this summer, but it has started to heat up.

My room always seems to get and stay incredibly hot, even if it's already cool outside. Opening the window doesn't help much. I've already turned off and unplugged two of the laptops in my room, my Xbox 360, some external hard drives, and a few other electronic devices, but that didn't seem to make things any cooler either, even though they've all been off/unplugged for about 3 or 4 days now.

After that, I've tried leaving my door open and having the fan oscillate the air around. Running the air conditioner for the entire house would be too expensive.

Before anyone suggests putting in a window air conditioner, my window isn't the kind that could be used with one of those, so that option wouldn't work too well for me. And those other portable air conditioners are too expensive. I could probably try one of those DIY air conditioners, but buying one would probably work immensly better than wasting a bunch of money on parts to build one myself.

Anybody have inexpensive yet effective ways of keeping your room cool? I'd love to hear any ideas.