End of day recap February 4th 2010
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Thursday February 4th (Shanghai and SFO, PDX)
I’m writing all of this on my flight from PVG to SFO.
Preflight check-in information is incorrect. The flight home is pretty packed! The three seats to my left have been taken up by a family of three. Oh well. I still have the aisle seat and some legroom to stretch out to the actual aisle itself. Yay for using travel agents through the company and having saved seating preferences!
This is a 10.5 hour flight to SFO today. Let’s get this show on the road! Next stop: SFO! I guess this flight feels less like a cattle drive than the flight out here. But then again, I have been living in a city of 20 million (?) people for the last two weeks. There definitely is no concept of a personal bubble. People push and shove to get somewhere and they don’t wait their turn.
I woke up around 4am this morning – 8 hours before my flight. I just could not soundly sleep through the night with the anticipation of finally flying HOME! I did get to catch up with a few friends over Google Chat in the morning. It’s about time we were able to have a conversation without my colleagues bothering me (I didn’t go into the Shanghai office today). Chatting with friends is always a good deal. Talking over the phone would be better, but prohibitively expensive. I did call home a few times though… you know, priorities. 
Dude, just now, I was called a banana by the Chinese guy sitting next to me – yellow on the outside with a white heart on the inside. That was rude. Also called an ABC again. Woo. >:
The flight attendant is cute!
1:45pm – Time for take off (well, in a few minutes anyway). I have my gifts in hand and my backpack is safely stowed in the overhead bins. We’re taxiing around the airport. Everyone please have your seats in the full upright position and your tray tables showed! UA 858 is on its way home! I’ll land around 8am pacific time. It’s 21:29 Feb 3rd in SFO at the moment. If all goes well and this flight lands on time, I have a short layover at SFO and then I’ll be on my way to PDX!
I’m not sure what kind of interesting things one can find to write about on the flight home, but I’ll see what I can do for you. I still have DVT plans to review and I’ve been pushing off that work for the last 2.5 weeks. I *should* be doing that on the flight, but I would need a lot of incentive first!
“Hey, you look Chinese, why aren’t you speaking it?” – more words from the guy next to me. Dude, shut up.
Well, I’m doing what I said I would do: I’m capturing my thoughts on paper first. It’s a little more convenient than opening my laptop and waiting for it to come out of hibernation. However, the tarmac bouncing is making it difficult to write with any good penmanship. It’ll just be fine and dandy as long as I can read it and transcribe it later!
1:56pm (Shanghai time) – Still taxiing around the airport. This is a huge place. I kinda wish I was at the window seat so I can take some video of the eventual take off.
1:58pm (Shanghai time) – Woohoo! Engines are reving up! Here we go!
Jessica – I got the maglev photos for you. We topped out at 431km/h this afternoon! There was a loud sonic boom as the second train passed us at full speed. That was a trip! I have a video of the speed indicator as we ramped up. Here is applied magnetics in action! Maybe I should have sat at a window seat on the maglev. That way I could have seen a little bit more of the country. There’s always next time I guess – though still hoping “next time” is a ways out there. I much rather stay home and have the Shanghai team travel to the US on the next round. It’s only fair, right?
Of all the things that I’ve missed from home, my family and friends is first on that list. That’s a good thing. I’ll see you all in a few hours.
We’re hitting some mild turbulence in the first few minutes of this flight! The seat belt sign is on. The flight attendant has announce in both English and Chinese that one should remain seated but some of the Chinese passengers are not listening to the directions on this flight! How difficult is it to understand when the sign is on you SIT?
We’re currently going @ 625mph and passing 25K feet. We’re still climbing!
Yay for filling out the US Customs and Border Protection forms. This is at most a minor inconvenience for all of the freedoms that we all have at home.
Observation: All of the customs forms for foreign countries are in at least two languages – the local language and English. However, the US customs form is only in English. What’s up with that? When I flew into the EU and China, the local country made the effort to cater to the needs to the world traveler. Why doesn’t the US do the same? Are we above everyone else? Let me know your thoughts. I’m sure I’ll get some flak for this one.
So I’ve felt completely foreign in Shanghai. I don’t know Mandarin and I cannot speak Cantonese fluently. Also no one knows Cantonese in Shanghai anyway so any kind of normal communication was an absolute bust! I’ve made this point before. This got me thinking: I think my family heritage will be lost with my generation (or at least with me anyway). That’s a pretty sad thought actually. I never did really learn our family history. I know it’s not too late though; I need to make an effort and find out what I can. Being American born I don’t have any true idea of all of the hardships that my parents, grandparents, or even my great grand relatives had to over come. I admire what my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents did 30 some years ago and decide to immigrate to the United States to start a new life in the land of opportunity and enjoy the freedoms that we may take for granted. I guess I really don’t know what it really means to be Chinese. Kind of a sobering thought. There’s just too much time to let the mind wander and little activity to do on the plane, ya know? I guess I’m being brutally honest with myself.
We’re currently flying over Osaka, Japan – 890 miles into the flight @33K feet with a 162mph tail wind. 723mph ground speed.
Regarding the US forms: The lady in front of me is graciously helping other Chinese fill out their paper work for entry into the US. How nice of here to do that.
Ah, just finished flying over Japan and Dr. Horrible has started! First of many viewings for this flight, I’m sure. “The world is a mess and I need to RULE IT!”
I can hear a lot of yelling on the place. Most Shanghiese speak REALLY loud. I can hear them through my head phones. Time to invest in a set of noise cancelling ones for a future flight (or even for general zoning out in the office.
My hand hurts from writing these five pages. I’m so used to typing!
Ground speed 719mph. Somewhere over the Pacific. Time to Zonk out w/Dr. Horrible in the background. 4625 miles to go, 2hrs 21minutes on the flight clock.
3hours 16 minutes into the flight. I’m wide awake now. I got a few minutes of shuteye w/Dr. HSAB. OH man! That stinks. The kid two seats down just let one rip. Margin note: Scan these documents! It might be a good sharing idea. This would be something different than just reading electronic text from me all of the time.
Linkin Park’s “In Pieces” is playing again!
A guy just asked me if I would like to trade my seat with his in the very back row of the plane. Really? Why would I even consider that?
We are now approaching the International Dateline. Yay to returning to the same day (Feb 4th) for the second time! Woohoo!! Yippee!! I’m shifting through time!!
646mph, 35K feet. 3115 miles left, 4hours 47 minutes into the flight; 3263 miles traveled. Tail wind is 104 mph. I’m looking at the map way too much! I haven’t paid any attention to the in-flight entertainment.
Cold Play – Clocks is playing in my headphones now.
Snack service has started. Looks like we’re getting a third of a sandwich on white bread, with ham, cheddar cheese and a flimsy piece of lettuce. There’s also a lemon cookie – OOH, I should make lemon cookie! I have lots of random thought tangents. But you probably know that by now.
Airline food is hit or miss. The things you are safe with is soda, and tea. Oh, speaking of which, I seem to have mostly kicked the soda habit while I was in Shanghai. I only had a few cans worth versus the bottles and bottles worth on a weekly basis in the US. The same goes with coffee (mainly because they don’t serve coffee in Chinese restaurants!)
Felicia Day’s ‘(Do you want to date my) Avatar’ is playing. Another OH! Moment –> Must watch Avatar in IMAX 3D again when I get back!
I have not written this much in one sitting in a long time. I guess this is still pretty readable – which is encouraging. At work, I have a tendency to write really fast, but at the expense of legibility and sometimes I spend more effort trying to figure out what I wrote in the first place! This fine tip ball point pen seems to be working out OK! (Yeah, so this is apparently the kind of “interesting things” that I found to write about on the flight home. Hey, you’re reading this. Ha!)
3863 miles traveled, currently going 661 mph at 25K feet. 2530 miles remaining. We’re currently 5 hours and 42 minutes into the flight.
Reflections on the Shanghai airport: This is a huge place! There are two main ticketing terminals. Terminal 2 houses all incoming and outgoing UA flights along with 20 other carriers. The maglev takes you from downtown Shanghai (around Century Park) to the far east side of Shanghai in just under 8 minutes for the 300km/h run, and obviously faster when operating at 420km/h (that’s 268 mph for the people that like imperial units). As with most foreign airports, they are pretty darn smoky – and just like every other place in Shanghai. After going through customs and security I still had an hour and a half of spare time. I can just kick it around the gate and not worry about making it to my flight. That worked out well. I bought a bottle of water after passing through the security gates with the intention of drinking it on the flight. At least that would be some better guarantee that it is drinkable. However, once we entered the gate, the airport officials told everyone that water/liquids would not be permitted on the flight even if you purchased it in the secured area. 30RMB (~$4.20USD) brand new bottle of water tossed. What a waste. Many others scoffed at this. That is crap, but we want to get home so it’s smarter not to make a big fuss!
At 37K ft, 654mph ground speed. 4897 miles traveled, 1340 miles left, 7hrs 16 minutes into the flight.
I really should try and get some sleep. ‘Clocks’ is playing on my play list again. Apparently I have a 2.5 hour mp3 playlist on my laptop!
Hey! It’s time for breakfast on this flight. We’re getting close!
At 38k ft, 5994 miles traveled, 456miles remaining! We’re 8hrs 56minutes into the flight.
We’re just a few minutes away from landing back in the US. YAY! So excited! I think it’s around 7:15am PST February 4th off the California coast. Funny, didn’t I already live this moment halfway around the world yesterday?
My cell phone is going to get turned back on once we hit the tarmac. First things I’m going to do are obviously text and call people! I’m glad to be able to use at least one comfort of ‘home’ again (I’m in the US — that counts as ‘home’ for now… just another flight to go before actually getting back to PDX).
Starting decent; passing through the clouds at 23K ft at 430mph.
Cabin lights are back on. We’re landing at SFO at 8am – 38 minutes ahead of schedule.
Oh I need to find all my receipts and get my expense report in order.
Well, it’s been fun. We landed after 10 hours of flying and after writing 9 pages of notes in my notepad. I’ll see you on the ground. We’re landing this 777.
The plane is currently taxiing to the SFO terminal. LOL, I just turned my cell phone back on… there is a huge backlog of text messages that are now just being delivered. I’m going to get breakfast at SFO. I think I’m done writing for now. My hand hurts. I’ll call you guys when I get into PDX. Cheers!
-T
End of week recap Jan 24th – Jan 29th 2010
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Sunday Jan 24th (PDX and Shanghai time) –
The flight from PDX to SFO (San Francisco airport) was fairly nice. I had an aisle seat and it was only 2 hours long. SFO to PVG (Shanghai airport) is a different story though. It’s a freakin’ zoo at the terminal for SFO! My flight to PVG was almost full. Airports are the best places to get a new disease! Nothing like spending the next 13 hours on a plane with recycled air. Mmmmm!!
These are my observations for the 13 hour flight to Shanghai. I swapped between the in-flight movies, watching Dr. Horrible, and listening to music on my laptop.
1 hour into the flight. It’s time for lunch service: The dude next to me is smacking his food. And someone else is hawking up a huge loogie. Lovely.
2 hours into the flight: Everyone in the back of the cabin is closing the blinds on the windows and going to sleep. It’s only 2pm (US time)! I guess it’ll be dark inside the plane for this trip, even though it’s going to be sunny all the way over – that is going to be interesting. The flight back will be dark the entire time! The in-flight map shows that we are currently traveling at 640/mph at 34000 ft. That is pretty cool.
~6 hours into the flight: We are currently flying over the Bering Straight and the first thing that came to my mind was the Deadliest Catch on Discovery, along with the Bon Jovi theme song that goes with it… is that bad? I observed the full nose pick twice from the person next to me. She really got her finger up in there and did a number on the nostril. Lol
I find it funny that people are talking to me in Mandarin and I respond in English. Talk to me in Cantonese and there just may be a chance for me to reciprocate with you! I have a feeling I’m going to get a lot of that as I spend my time overseas.
Oh yeah, I have the Linkin Park Minutes to Midnight CD with me… oh so good! Listening to `Valentine’s Day`… maybe I should change the song. I’ve already played out `In Pieces,` – every time I hear it I want to jump around the plane… but I think I’ll have to resist doing that in fear of being tranquilized!
7 hours into flight: I’ve been cooped up in the same airplane for the last 8 hours…. 7 hours in the air. The flight duration is 13 hours! Our current airspeed is 504mph… yeah we slowed down and there is a fierce headwind of 140mph. We crossed over the International Date Line an hour ago. I’ve not slept one bit and the funny thing is that I’m wide awake. There has been constant sunlight since we took off from SFO. This is a 6100+ mile adventure one way. Let’s not make it too frequent eh?
The first thing that I’m doing in Shanghai is logging into Facebook and Gmail. I think it’ll be around 3am in the US when I’m doing that. Would be cool to see at least someone online, but I’m guessing not. I hope everyone is doing well at home.
I’m continuing to pass the time with Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and a few episodes of The Guild. I’ve seen most of the movies and shows that are playing on the in-flight entertainment system. I also apparently forgot to copy my other movies to my laptop. More Dr. HSAB never hurt anybody! (well, technically he did!)
The flight path was a little weird. I thought we would have flown straight across the same latitude from SFO to the destination, but we went up north along the coast of Alaska, and dropping in from Siberia. I guess this is a shorter path. Just used to seeing a 2D projection of the world.
I think I should have just grabbed the pad of paper and pen from my backpack. It’s a little bit less distracting while trying to plop down thoughts… especially from people overlooking my shoulder. I think one of those polarized security screens would be a good idea for the next trip. The local time in Portland is 7:42 PM. There is 2300 more miles left, 4100 traveled thus far. Time to sign out… and go back to the entertainment of Dr.HSAB!
10 hours into the flight: I resorted to playing minesweeper and I’m getting fairly good at it. It’s a good way to pass the time
Monday Jan 25th (Shanghai time) –
We arrived in the Pudong airport in Shanghai and went through immigration and customs just fine. I noticed that they had IR cameras trained on people’s faces to measure their face temp. The purpose is to try and identify those with a fever and … wait for it… H1N1! It’s a good idea, but I think that may give some false readings since the temperature measurement is taken at a distance.
We took the maglev train out of the airport. That thing travels at 300kph! I got checked into the Renaissance Shanghai Pudong Hotel. This place is really nice! My bed is huge! The view from the 17th floor is pretty cool as well.
My manager and I went down to a local Thai food place down the street. Got fried rice with shrimp and mangos. I should remember this one for next time that I have people come over.
The first experience of crossing the street wasn’t too positive – I almost got run over by a taxi. Streetlights and crosswalks don’t mean a thing over here. If you walk across the street, be very aware of the cars, bikes and mopeds that are around you.
I’ve been awake since 4am Hillsboro time Sunday Jan 24th, now it’s approaching 7am Monday Jan 25th. Body clock is completely screwed up.
Tuesday Jan 26th (Shanghai time) –
I’m up at 5am here. My wakeup call isn’t for another hour and I’ve only gotten 5-6 hours of sleep after this whole traveling ordeal. I’m hoping this will get better as the week progresses. I really need to catch some elusive Z’s.
I checked the hotel internet speed with the Speakeasy speed test. It is less than 500Kbps. At a cost of $160RMB/night (approx $22.90USD/night), that is a rip off.
The sun was out today and it was rather beautiful. First day in Shanghai and I saw the sunrise from my room window.
I met the design team today. They are much older than me. I think they were surprised to learn that I was younger than them and that I am their mentor. We went to a local noodle house for lunch with a few members of the design team.
My manager and I went to the underground market (fake market) after dinner. It was an experience – many markets in two underground sections filled with imitation products ranging from electronics to clothing. Haggling for prices is an art form here. They start out higher than the US prices, and you low ball them. People eventually meet somewhere around 1/3 of the asking price. I didn’t get anything from this place since it was all cheapo things. Still interesting to walk around though. I did see some 580GB USB sticks. LOL, there is no way that density can fit in the small form factor.
Wednesday Jan 27th (Shanghai time) –
I had scrambled eggs, fried rice, sushi, sausage links for breakfast at 7 this morning. A nice change up from having breakfast around 9 after I stroll in to work in Hillsboro.
It’s been a rainy day. Wow it sucks outside and all I can think about is “this is acid rain!”
Went to lunch at the IBM center and dinner with a few colleagues at a fancy Chinese restaurant. I’m an ABC – American Born Chinese – that was the phrase for the night. It’s true, but kind of got annoyed by the reference. I feel really, really foreign here.
Thursday Jan 28th (Shanghai time) –
Woke up in the middle of the night. Realized I’m still at RadiSys, Shanghai! Even after a few days, my sleep schedule is still messed up. I went to sleep at 10pm yesterday, but ended up waking up at 1am, and again at 4am. I decided to check e-mail. That put me back to sleep (thank goodness).
Had breakfast with scrambled eggs, ham, potatoes, and a spring roll. I’m eating way better than I normally do for breakfast. That’s good! Kinda wonder how much food has been laced with MSG.
Went into the office by 7:30 this morning. My manager and I are the first ones here, and one of the last ones to leave. Kind of weird, but have to deal with the e-mail and work here, and deal with e-mail from the US. The world needs to be flat so there are no time zones.
The sun is back out today. I went to lunch with Tim and Grace at the IBM center again. We decided to take a long walk around the technology park on the way back to the office.
I left work at 6pm, had dinner at the hotel and just camped out in the hotel room afterwards. I think i’ve had a little bit too much time to think. I miss home and I have another week here. I miss the familiar. I miss hanging out with my friends. Its 9:18pm – time for bed.
Friday Jan 29th (Shanghai time) –
We went out to lunch at a place called “Soup” (a Cantonese style family restaurant) in downtown Zhangjiang with our Shanghai team. That place was pretty high class!
After work, I met up with Jill and Desi at the Cantina Agave over in Puxi. I’m glad they made it up from Ningbo for the weekend. It was good to finally see them again! We’ve got some cool plans for the weekend. ‘night everyone.
Midweek recap Jan 3rd – Jan 7th 2010
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1/7/2010 Blog remark: I’m looking at this entry. WordPress reports 1500 words. It spans 2 pages. I think I am better off doing two updates per week instead of a single weekly recap.
-T
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Sunday Jan 3rd – Just got over my fever. It’s the first few days of the new year, so it was time for the annual mass backup of digital photos from my HDDs to DVD-R. I started off with double checking all of my SD and CF cards around 2pm. I checked that every single photo, and video were copied and I had an exact copy on to the HDD already — yes, I checked the MD5 sum of each file with a comparison program. Nerdy.
I managed to take 4400 photos / videos that total 12.5GB in 2009. My backup for the year spanned 3 DVD-Rs. As I have done in years past, I made one set for an on-site backup, and a second set for an off-site backup. (no, this is NOT overkill. You should have seen what i did with my film camera negatives — those are stored in Acid free books, and descant packs were used to keep the moisture constant ) Anyway, I did a file checksum compare between the original source file on the HDD, the first DVD-R backup set and the second DVD-R backup set to ensure there were no bit errors and the data integrity was solid. I also made sure that the DVD-R was readable on a second computer without issue. That part alone took 5 hours.
At 9pm my computer has a HDD auto-clone operation that kicks in every two days that copies everything from C drive to my D drive. I use the Casper software to do this. That took a few minutes to update. At 10pm I was finally able to copy the 2009 photos into my E drive which is powered on every once and a while when I need to do a quick digital backup without needing to burn stuff to media.
Oh yeah, I spent way too much time on Facebook while the backups were occurring. Too bad I didn’t go riding.
I registered for the following cycling rides today:
- Worst Day of the Year ride 2010 (Feb 14th) – 40 mile option
- LiveSTRONG Seattle 2010 – 100 mile option. Join my team at: http://seattle2010.livestrong.org/TIO
- Tour de Cure (Hillsboro) 2010 – 100 mile option. Join my team at: http://main.diabetes.org/site/TR?pg=personal&fr_id=7041&px=5551585
Monday Jan 4th – 1am: Tweeted to #FB: “1am. Still wide awake. I really should have tried to maintain a normal sleep schedule over the last few days… Need to be awake by 6!”
Well, 6am came by and waking up was an insane challenge. I had a 7am appointment at Kaiser (Mother Joseph Plaza campus), but I got the run around and the doc wasn’t in the office. That is not what I’m expecting when you have an appointment setup. So I had things rescheduled for 1pm that afternoon, but all the way over at the Kaiser Sunnybrook office in Clackamas. I took the afternoon off from work and drove all the way out there. A little inconvenient to drive out there, but I got medically cleared to resume cycling… thank goodness everything should be OK.
I went to Fred Meyer to pick up groceries and saw a car with plates that read “DR HRBL.” I took it as “Dr. Horrible” which made my day. Jill pointed out that it could be “Dr Herbal” … which kinda ruined the fun! Anyway, got food for the next few days. I made a tuna noodle casserole [recipe] for dinner. It was a quick and easy meal to make, and it was good. I would argue that the recipe only serves 2 people, not 4.
I went through Facebook in the evening hours and noticed I got tagged in Jessica’s vacation note. For the record, 10am is WAY too early to text while one is really wanting to sleep . Cycling plans for this Saturday with Jess is in progress.
Tuesday Jan 5th – 1:40am: Tweeted to #FB: “1:40am. Awake for the last hr & can’t sleep. Isn’t there a ’sleep mode’ for this mind?:(”
I really need to get the sleep schedule back on track. This is gonna hurt much more as the week progresses.
I looked at my Google Analytics report this morning and noted that the number search result that leads to my website is “Frootee stargate” and links to my blog entry in October 2009.
I’m pleased to announce that showing Dr. Horrible a few times over the summer months has taken hold in some of my friends… even when one is on vacation, and said person may have been watching it in the car as they were a passenger heading to their destination… ahem… Jessica.
I started watching Firefly again. Yeah, I think enough time has passed that I can enjoy watching the series again. The last binge was in August as noted in the entry titled “The last 3 Months” and subsequent drawings and collection of Firefly maquettes.
Cycling plans set for Saturday morning – 9am, 30+ mile ride around Hillsboro.
Plans set for Sunday too… this will be my second visit to Corvallis since graduation. Should be fun!
Wednesday Jan 6th – 1:00am: Tweeted to #FB: “Really? 1am. Why can’t I sleep?!? Three days straight of sitting in bed for 1+hr without falling a sleep. Crazy.”
I’m starting to think about getting a smart phone and a data plan. Maybe a Blackberry won’t be too bad after all. I’m gonna stay clear of the iPhone unless they can seriously increase the battery time. We’ll see what happens. It’s just a thought for now. It would be nice to be connected to the world and have access to information at your fingertips.
My refrigerator is on the fritz again. Its a 2003 General Electric GSS22WGPC side by side. The condenser coil in the back of the freezer is completely frozen over and the fridge section is getting close to 50 degrees. I spent the better part of the evening taking the food out and storing it in a ice chest so things won’t spoil. I removed the shelving from the freezer side and removed the back panel to the freezer. Spent a good 30 minutes aiming a hair dryer at the coil and got everything melted away. I didn’t have a chance to completely dismantle the freezer components and diagnose what is wrong, but at least this will get the fresh food section back in working order for a few weeks. Perhaps I’ll look at the components tomorrow night. Just need to do some research first. I did find a good forum and replacement parts website for some helpful advice from other consumers and repair guys:
Appliance Blog: http://www.applianceblog.com/mainforums/
Replacement parts: http://www.appliancepartspros.com/
Replacement parts (Sears): http://www.searspartsdirect.com/partsdirect/index.action
Exploded block diagram for my fridge: http://www.appliancepartspros.com/partsearch/model.aspx?model_id=5242135&diagram_id=22287624#d22287624
Thursday Jan 7th – I left work early today. There wasn’t much to do (and I’m thankful for that!)… though I still need to complete my performance review.
I took apart the freezer section once again. This time, I was on a mission to check what was wrong. It could have been one of three things: 1) the defrost heater , 2) the thermostat, or 3) the logic board. The logic board is the most expensive part… around $160. Visual inspection of the board didn’t show any signs of burns, or bulging caps. So that’s good. I’m hoping it’s item 1) or 2) since those cost MUCH less.
Anyway, I packed away all of the freezer food in a tote again and stored it outside with some ice. I proceeded to remove the shelving, then the back panel. Next came the ice maker motor, and the evaporator cover. The evaporator cooling fan was next to be removed. It covers and houses the access points for the defrost heater and thermostat that I was interested in. It took a bit of effort to disassemble as i had to squeeze myself into the freezer cavity. That was a bit awkward.
The thermostat tested OK and the wiring continuity was just fine. I tested the defrost heater last and found it open. It’s a resistive heating element, so it should have registered something on the ohm-meter, but didn’t. (In hind sight, I guess I could have checked the defrost heater FIRST without having to completely remove the freezer compartment components. Oh well). I found a replacement defrost heater from the Sears Part Direct website for $36 + $10 shipping. Not too bad I’d think — the closest part store that carried stock was deep in PDX, so $10 isn’t too much to pay for convenience. This is still cheaper than having a GE tech come out and shelling out $80 for just the diagnosis fee + parts + labor. I should get the part by next Thursday. Lets hope that fixes it.
I snapped a few pictures of the take apart and posted them onto facebook. If you don’t have an account, you can view them through this public link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2238986&id=19700626&l=3d5e1d27ba
To wind down the evening, I talked to mom for an hour and caught up on the week. She’s really worried that I’ll get cold in China… I keep telling her my jacket is warm enough; yes, I’ll be warm; and no, -4degC isn’t that cold with the gear that I’m bringing.
Rest in peace Mr. O’Halloran. You will be missed by all of your past and present students at Mt. Tabor M.S.
-T