Heading into the Mountain View Dev Day this weekend, where I expect to be fairly serious, I'm going to allow myself a bit of levity and offer a true story of cluelessness which would make Tim Allen ("What is the headlight for on that thing, anyway?") proud - and maybe even Jeff Foxworthy.
Ah, the rigors of bachelor life...
Last Saturday, I was trying to vacuum my apartment using my almost-new vacuum cleaner, which I bought from Sears in the fall. The last few times I'd tried to use it, though, were disappointing at best. It's got a nice HEPA air filter which wasn't getting filled. Plus it was making an unusual sound about three seconds after I started it. I figured the hoses were blocked (I'm not entirely clueless), so I took the big one from the filter to the vacuum motor out and looked through it. All I saw was blackness.
Since the hose itself was black plastic and had a bend through it at the end, I thought the blockage was further upstream - in the vacuum head, where the spinning brushes meet the hose. So I grabbed the screwdriver, dismantled the head enough to get at the hose (after unplugging the vacuum - there's clueless, and then there's Darwin award clueless) and did remove a couple pieces of plastic film. I looked through to make sure it was clear, and sure enough, I saw a little light poking through.
That should've been a clue that I wasn't thinking clearly (pun not intended), but I missed it and put the vacuum cleaner back together... or at least, I tried to. I spent the next half hour wrestling the roller back in, keeping the rubber loop extended, and trying to screw the plate back in... and it wouldn't close. No matter how I tugged on the plate and pushed on the head, the two wouldn't meet.
Today, the technician arrived at my apartment (a couple hours later than the scheduled time, but I'd moved since I bought the vacuum, so it wasn't entirely his fault). He started doing the same things I had already tried - namely, trying to force the plate back on. I pointed out I'd removed the spinning brush piece and put it back in. He looked, and spotted that the round side of the mounts was pointing out when the flat side should have been out. It was a pretty obvious mistake, and probably in the manual. But who reads the manual? :-)
I wasn't satisfied, though: the original problem, the non-vacuuming vacuum, hadn't been solved yet. Since the tech's already here...
He had me take the big hose, from vacuum head to filter, out again and check it. I noted it was black through it, at which point he said I should see a little light bouncing off the inside of it. Ohhhhhhhh....
So I split the hose in the center (where there's a convenient attachment for a longer hose), and sure enough, a good clump of dust was right in the center. Here was the real blockage, the real reason it wasn't working. Also a couple clumps of old tissues. The tech said, "You're supposed to pick up the big stuff!" Well, yeah, but I didn't know I had to pick up the medium stuff too.
Now the vacuum works, and I'm happy - as well as mildly embarrassed. But I can laugh about it. It took twenty minutes, tops, and Sears made a little more off my gracious incompetence.
I guess I just suck at vacuums.
Posted by WeirdAl at March 23, 2007 3:02 PM