We finally got a dishwasher! It took some time and work to get it installed, but fortunately we had a lot of help! A couple weeks ago Ken helped remove the old cabinet and Steve wired a new electric outlet. This weekend Paul helped do all the plumbing and install the new cabinet + dishwasher. But when we finally hooked everything up Sunday evening and tried to test it out, the dishwasher flashed a ‘technical fault’ error code. Blah!

Paul called Miele this morning at about 8:45. They did some tests over the phone and said they would have to send a technician out to look at it. After lunch, I got a call Miele saying that they could send someone by in and hour. At 2pm or so, a Miele technician named Glenn shows up, hooks up some debugging equipment, carefully pulls out the dishwasher, unclogs the circulation pump, puts it back together, and it works! Elapsed time from frustrated customer support call to happy customer: about 6 hours! Yay! I think I got lucky because someone had canceled their appointment so they fit me in right way, but still.. yay! So much better than dealing with AppleCare or Blue DoubleCross.

To top it off, Glenn explained a lot about how the Miele worked (I had no idea), and tweeked the software to increase the fill level and water temperature so we can run it on economy mode and still get super-clean dishes. This is like taking your computer to a Linux hacker who hooks you up with a custom distro to get more reliable network connections. Or like taking your car to a gearhead who reprograms the ECU to give you an extra 50HP. Our dishwasher now runs GlennOS. Awesome.

If you care, the clogged circulation pump (error code F14) was suspected to be caused by water drying in the the machine after testing at the factory in Germany. Apparently German water is very hard, and it hadn’t drained completely before shipping (it arrived at our house still full of water), so it left residue in the circ pump.

Here is Zara inspecting the dishwasher (the cabinet work is not done yet):

Here is Paul, who did a weekend’s worth of install work, and the inside of the dishwasher:

This dishwasher connects to the cold water supply, and heats the water depending on what the selected cycle requires. Connecting to the cold instead of hot water supply adds an extra 10-15 minutes to the roughly 2 hour normal cycle, but increases efficiency.

To add a second line to our cold water supply, we replaced the shut-off valve under the sink with a dual 1/2″ to 2 x 3/8″ shut-off valve made by BrassCraft:

If you have 1/2″ unthreaded copper pipe coming into your house, and you need to attach a 1/2″ threaded fitting, you need one of these 5/8″ compression to 1/2″ pipe thread unions. The 5/8″ fits over the unthreaded 1/2″ copper with a compression fitting, and then you can just screw the shut-off valve onto the other side of the union. The fine folk at Cole Hardware helped us find this elusive adapter, shown here covered in teflon tape.

We hope the dish robot likes its new home in our kitchen! Thanks to Ken, Steve, and Paul from helping get it installed, and thanks to Glenn for Miele for making it work!

Filed under: dishwasher, gadgets, how to install a dishwasher, howto, Miele, recommended, shag, support · 2 Comments

Today I was thinking about Fray, the old-school story-telling website from back in the day. Unfortunately, they went on hiatus a couple days ago, and and have definitely been missed. It’s odd that the same day that I decided to check up on Fray is the same day that they announce the return of Fray, as a printed quarterly publication! Submissions are being accepted until October 1, so get busy!

I hope they resurrect the Fray Day events as well. We went to Fray Day 7 in SF and got to hear Armistead Maupin read and Noe Venable sing. It was magic.

Update: OK, it’s not odd that Fray picked today to relaunch; today is their 11th anniversary. But it is weird that I picked today to randomly start think about Fray.. hmm…

Filed under: all talk, books, fray, inspiration, recommended, san francisco · 0 Comments

A couple years ago, I bought a CamelBak with a hydration bladder that started to leak within a couple months after I bought it, but was too busy at the time to return it. Last month I finally decided to contact them about it, so I fired off an email and within the next day they got back to me and told me where to send it. Within a week of sending it in, i got a brand new one in the mail which I just picked up today. That was all I had to do – no paperwork or receipt required. The hydration bladders have a lifetime warranty and according to their website, they will replace them even after extended use. I’m happy to say that they definitely delivered on that promise in a timely fashion and would highly recommend them!

Filed under: cycling, recommended · 1 Comment