Matthew Lenz » Uncategorized

Mint is now just a marketing gimmick.

Matthew — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:22:29 +0000

When Mint.com first launched it was a breath of fresh air. It allowed you to easily track your spending by correctly aggregating all your financial data into a central repository. Lets fast forward to now that Intuit bought the company. The data from ING Direct has becomes nearly worthless because all Paper bill payments get changed to a description of ‘Payer’ and a category of ‘Printing Services’. All Electronic bill payments get changed to ‘Electronic Payment Systems’ with a category of ‘Business Services’. I have to go in manually and fix these for every transaction that is imported. There is no way to fix this problem via the Mint “rules” interface.

Who cares about your product actually working when it’s free to use and you make tons of money off referrals getting people to switch to a new credit card with lower interest rates, right?

Way to blow it Intuit. You took something that was special and turned it into something sub-par.

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FOLLOW UP AGAIN: Kenmore / Whirlpool dryer won’t stay running or heat?

Matthew — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:51:50 +0000

It’s been over a year and a half since the last issue we’ve had with this hunk of junk dryer. This time it popped a circuit and fried the main board. I ended up having to get the extended warranty (you can get a $200 1 year extended warranty for any sears appliance that is less than 10 years old) to have it be replaced (I didn’t know what the exact issue was and I wasn’t going to pay to replace part after part until it was fixed). AVOID THESE PRODUCTS.

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FOLLOW UP: Kenmore / Whirlpool dryer won’t stay running or heat?

Matthew — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:09:57 +0000

You will never guess what happened?! It has been a couple weeks now since I fixed the motor relay. Well, the heat relay just went out this evening. Good thing I bought extra.

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Kenmore / Whirlpool dryer won’t stay running or heat?

Matthew — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:00:34 +0000

We’ve got a Kenmore “Elite” dryer (actually made by Whirlpool) that stopped running when you release (let up) on the start button. After doing some research I found out that there is a $5 relay (every other place you try to buy it is going to be $35-50 each) that USUALLY fixes this problem.

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for you spending $5 plus shipping on a part that doesn’t fix the problem.

There are 2 of these relays in the control panel actually. One is the motor relay and the other is the heat relay. The motor relay was my problem. Supposedly if your dryer isn’t heating up then it is the heat relay. The part number for both relays is POTTER & BRUMFIELD/TYCO T9AP1D52-48-03 and the Kenmore part number is 3405281. If you search around on the internet you’ll come across a massive thread on Epinions dedicated to problems like this one. Sears will happily send someone out and charge you $200 to fix this problem unless you have an extended warranty which they will sell you for $200 for a single year. Honestly, I can’t believe there hasn’t been a class action lawsuit against Sears for these relays.

Just fix this yourself!

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility if you break your dryer even more.

On the sides of the front of the control panel you’ll see these plastic moldings. Pull back on the top and remove them (they snap into place) exposing 2 screws on the bottom. Remove the screws and lift up on the front lower edge of the control panel CAREFULLY/SLOWLY and let it hang back on the soft plastic hinges. Make sure you don’t snag on that resistor coming off the motherboard. You’ll see the two identical black relays matching the spares you purchased (I bought 3 of them total for future use). The one on the right is for the Motor and on the left is for the Heat. Replace which ever one is the problem (be sure to hook the wires back up to the correct contacts). Put it back together and fire it up. Now, go take the $190 you didn’t spend on fixing your dryer and save it for buying a non-Kenmore (do some research and avoid any manuf. that produces products for Sears completely out of spite).

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Halloween 2004

Matthew — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 03:47:42 +0000

For some reason, I just wasn’t in the mood this year. It kinda ticked Kristi
off cuz she says its the only thing we have in common. We did catch the
5hr special on Bravo which counted down the 100 scariest movies of all time.
First was given to “Jaws”; second to “Alien” and third to “The Exorcist.” I
guess I pretty much agree with their choices overall. I do think that “The
Exorcist” should have been #2. Personally, its my #1 but a lot more people
have seen “Jaws” so that has to be taken into account.

Since it rained not a lot of kids showed up and I didn’t spend much time handing out candy. Kristi (dressed as a witch) handed out candy with a co-worker who came over dressed as an Orc. I walked up and down our subdivision following a few groups of kids in my Michael Myers costume. I only made a couple kids cry though, muuuhahahah!! I’m a pretty big dude so I sell it pretty well

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