Notebookscribbles

BANG. Click, click, clickity click [Pause] BANG

This had my attention from in my office immediately after the first bang. Because those are sounds I shouldn't hear coming from the Kitchen.

BANG. Click, click, clickity….

Oh for fucks sake. I know exactly what it is. MBH is trying to get the washing machine to do something it's probably not wanting to do.

Off to the Kitchen. Yup. I'm right.

“What the fuck are you doing beating the hell out of the machine?”

“I'm not”

Deep breath. It never fails to amaze me how our 8 year old selves are our default setting when we're caught.

“I heard distinct banging…REALLY distinct”

“Er, that was me just pulling the plug and plugging it back in”

“Did I put a four tonne plug on that? I forget?”

“I didn't bang it!”

“Bollox. It was banging and then spinning the selector. STEP AWAY FROM THE MACHINE”

I have a certain sensitivity to washing machines. After travelling a lot as a young fella a working washing machine is like the Ring to Gollum. Precious! And if it's in danger of being knackered – well I get a tad protective.

MBH and her eight year old self slink off.

I worked in tech support many eons ago. The default setting for people when things went wrong, was to try to click everything. Then click it harder (seriously), then give it a bit of a wallop. Click, Click. Click and repeat. It's called hoping for the Log Jam Effect. When felling logs and sending them down a river, if a few logs got stuck then they would just keep sending logs down. To dislodge the stuck ones. Problem with trying that theory? It only really works with logs…

You still see people doing it when waiting for a lift (elevator for those challenged in English). Somebody has pressed the button. The lift is taking it's time (as some lifts do) and the same person, or somebody else, presses the button a couple of more times, and then again. It's amazing. The temptation to say “Do you think if you tried three quick pushes, followed by a long one you'd crack the FUCKING SECRET CODE TO MAKE IT COME QUICKER?” … is immense.

The washing machine was not happy. Too many lights on and trapped on a cycle. So tonight I learned how to reset a washing machine after somebody has sent it mental mashing buttons and walloping it.

Not what I was expecting to do tonight for sure. I'm sure it'll come in handy again at some stage.

Also reminds me that we're still not too far from this.