System failures

Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds.
Ain't no use jiving
Ain't no use joking
Everything is broken.

Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.

Bridge: Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground

Broken cutters, broken saws,
Broken buckles, broken laws,
Broken bodies, broken bones,
Broken voices on broken phones.
Take a deep breath, feel like you're chokin',
Everything is broken.

Bridge: Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face

Broken hands on broken ploughs,
Broken treaties, broken vows,
Broken pipes, broken tools,
People bending broken rules.
Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking,
Everything is broken.
— Bob Dylan

It started about a week ago when the mercury dropped to the single digits and stayed there for days. The water line serving our dishwasher froze. It's happened before, but I hoped we'd dodged the bullet this time because there was no wind hitting the under-insulated wall between the dishwasher and God's own deep freeze. So the dishes started piling up and we broke into our supply of styrofoam picnic plates and plastic knives, forks and spoons.
And we hoped for a thaw.
Then, about 1:30 p.m. Sunday, I lost my internet connectivity. I ran through the usual routine - powercycle computer, DSL modem and wireless router. When that failed, I called tech support to ask if Frontiernet had any reports of a service outage in our tiny town. Nope. So I spent about an hour running various diagnostics that the techie thought might get me back online. At one point, he speculated that the problem was with my modem, since the browser couldn't see it. He finally ran out of ideas and put me on hold, saying he was going to pass me on to another geek who had more experience.
When it comes to experience, mine has been that everytime my DSL service goes down, Frontiernet Tech Support says the problem is with my equipment. And they've been wrong every time. Even the time when my modem died, because after all, that's their equipment too.
Moments after he put me on hold, I heard Maria screaming my name from the kitchen. I hung up the phone, dashed downstaris and found a small lake spreading out from the dishwasher.
This is the worst-case scenario of dishwasher water line freeze and it's only happened once before. The freezing water expands inside a valve and breaks it. It only starts to leak when the ice thaws and Sunday's modest warm-up was enough to trigger the flood.
Maria ran to the basement and shut off the water and I got out our floor scrubber, which has a water pick-up feature.
I left a voicemail for our plumber who called back about 30 minutes later to say he was at a basketball game with his son and would call us when he got home and checked his schedule to see when he could get to us. (It's now about 48 hours later and we still haven't heard from him.)
In the meantime, we located the shutoff valve for the dishwasher, shut it off and opened the main valve, restoring water to our toilets, showers, sinks and laundry facilities.
Monday morning, we were awakened by a call from our local Frontiernet repairman, a genuinely nice guy who lives next door to Maria's parents up on the north end of town. He showed up about 20 minutes later, did some voodoo and got me back online. The problem, he said, is a local piece of equipment the corporation is slow in funding. Once it gets installed, he said, these dropouts should stop. And, no, the people at tech support don't have any idea of the local problem and are useless when it happens.
Ok, that's two steps backward, one step forward.
Then Maria got home from work last night and reported the dashboard light on the Subaru that tells you when a door is open, wouldn't turn off. She said she'd checked all of the doors and confirmed they were properly closed. I went out and did the same. Of course the light stayed on. Apparently one of the door sensors had malfunctioned, making the car think a door was still open. Ordinarily, I wouldn't care what the car thought, but the circuit was set up to keep the light on even with the engine off and the key out of the ignition.
That's another step backwards.
With a major snowstorm about to start (We're under a blizzard warning as I write this the next day and the snow is blowing and piling up at an alarming rate.) I wasn't keen to let that dashboard light wipe out the battery overnight. So I rummaged through my tools in the garage and found a 10mm box-end wrench with which I disconnected the positive terminal of the battery.
When I got back inside the house, Maria showed me a rubber piece that she found on the floor by the front passenger seat. I'm 99 percent sure it's a tiny boot that fits over the door sensor button. With the boot gone, the closed door doesn't depress the sensor button far enough to assure the motherboard that the door is completely shut.
We awoke this morning to a call from one of Maria's reporters saying she doubted if she (the reporter) could get to work because a snow emergency had been declared in the county where she lives. Maria told her to stay put. The Indianapolis TV stations were all in Chicken Little Mode and it quickly became obvious that Maria wasn't going to drive the 18 miles to work today.
She saw this coming, which is why she went to Wal-Mart on her way home last night and bought some batting for a quilt she's making for the niece who was born on Saturday.
So we're hunkered down in the warm semi-security (until something else breaks) of our house while Maria quilts and runs her newspaper by phone and internet, directing the handful of people who were able to get to the office.
As a footnote, my Honda del Sol hasn't moved since the first snowfall about a week ago. It has big fat tires that are great on dry pavement, but turn into skis on snow and ice. The car is just plain scary on slick pavement and I let it sit when there's snow on the roads.
The best car I ever had for snow was the first car I owned - a Fontana gray 1965 VW beetle. With its rear engine over the drive wheels and skinny tires that concentrated the weight into small but effective contact patches, it was pretty much unstoppable in snow. Unfortunately, it was frequently unstartable because it was prone to gathering moisture in the distributor. But I'd trade my del Sol for the old bug on days like this.