katerit

On the positive side, it all got fixed within a few hours.

I've been commenting lately that I felt like my home repair budget was fairly safe because I'd replaced every significant appliance in the house at some point since I acquired the house. (Fifteen years ago. 15! Can you believe it?)

Well, I forgot about the garage door opener. But it didn't forget about me.

I'd just gotten my bike out this morning, then when I went to close the garage door behind me, it made a lot of sad noises and declined to close. Examination showed that several of the side-rollers had jumped out of their tracks. (I'd known that one was out of the track for some time, but I couldn't man-handle it back in and it didn't seem to be causing problems.)

So. This calls for professional help. But first it called for securing the critical garage contents because the door was stuck open and I live on a well-traveled street. That having been done, I went on Yelp, located a relatively local garage door repair company, and got scheduled for a window within a couple hours. OK, good sign.

I solved my anxiety about the lack of door closure by doing yard work in the front yard until the repair guy arrived.

In addition to the roller misalignment (which is now happening on both sides of the door, thanks to my efforts to get it to fail closed) the cables (which evidently get winched up by a heavy-duty spring) are tangled on the spindle rather than being neatly wound on their designated place. So the immediate problem could be solved with brute force: prying the roller track open enough to force the roller back in; disconnecting the cables and rewinding in the correct place. That was going to be about $500 labor. Ok.

But, he says, look: these cables are corroded, and one of the heavy-duty springs is rusty. Furthermore, you really should use rollers with longer shanks, because these have a risk of popping off their sockets on the door. (I'm sure my description is not helping anyone visualize this.) So, he says, I'm going to recommend you replace pretty much all the door-lifting hardware. That's going to be a couple thousand.

I wince, but I can see the truth of everything he's saying. So he goes to work on all that and gets it all back in working order. And then he says, "So, you don't have to do this, and I don't get any commission or anything if you do, but the motor on your door opener is 20 years old, it isn't really as powerful as it should be for how much you use it, and it's probably going to fail within the next couple years.

So that was a couple more thousand. But now I have a fancy garage door opener that talks to my iPhone and includes a security camera. And maybe--just maybe--now I really have replaced the last appliance that came with the house when I bought it. Unless I've forgotten something else.

I think people who follow me on social media (especially here and fb) are aware of my habit of explicitly noting when I don't want "helpful" commentary/suggestions/feedback on something I"m describing--and, conversely, explicitly noting when I'm seeking input. But sometimes I worry that people take that as a signal that I don't want interaction at all. (Why in the world would I post things about my life if I didn't want any interaction?)

I'd love to have more actual conversations on social media. Back and forth, discussions of topics of mutual interest. But it feels like so few people stop to ask themselves, "Am I phrasing my participation in this conversation in a way that implies the original poster is ignorant or incompetent? Is there a way I could rephrase that makes it clear that I'm providing additional information for other readers, rather than implying this is something the original poster doesn't know? Or that I'm amplifying and agreeing with the post, rather than contradicting it or poking holes in it?"

Here's a generic example.

OP: [Interesting Fact]
Commenter: [Subsidiary Information that could be assumed to be known by anyone who already knows Interesting Fact]

Compare to:
OP: [Interesting Fact]
Commenter: What I love about that [Interesting Fact] is [Subsidiary Information].

The first implies the OP doesn't know the fact. The second shows solidarity by assuming the OP knows the fact and the commenter is sharing their love for it.

Now, one could object that people differ in their ability to communicate in nuanced fashions and some people just aren't good at analyzing on the fly how their comments might be taken. But from the other side, people differ in their ability to assume good will in the face of past experience. A mirror-world version of "I'm not good at reading social cues" is "I'm working very hard to read social cues and the false positives are abundant." Telepathy still hasn't been invented.

Anyway, I don't know why I'm whining about this (given that the inciting interaction was incredibly trivial).