#cursed #schmutz #diy #houseStuff #rant

In this volume I will go over some recent annoyances in my life. I think I am cursed.

Oven Woes

Our oven has been taking a long time to heat up. Like over an hour to get to 400 F when set at 425 F. Not great. After some research online it seems like this is fairly common when the igniter is going bad. We have a stupid Capital oven that came with the house and the parts for it are not cheap. Not to mention I couldn’t find any local appliance repair places that said they serviced them. The gas company had a solution and I put out a service order. The repair person was very nice and I watched him try a few things. He came to the same conclusion that the igniter is bad and offered to order it and fix it.

I had already wanted to order the part myself and try to fix it before calling the repair person because I basically just paid $160 for what I already knew; I should have been more diligent in testing the igniter myself. Oh well! Anyway, I didn’t want to pay for the markup on the already expensive (~$140 USD) part, plus another $160 to haven them install it, so I said “thanks, I’ll take it from here”. I ordered the part (they charged me $32 for shipping!) and it arrived today. So I opened the part expecting to get to work replacing the igniter but the coil (not sure the correct term, the black part that glows when the oven is on) is completely broken! The part is unusable. Unreal!

Surround Sound Shenanigans

The basement of this house came pre wired for surround sound. I don’t necessarily agree with the position of the rear speaker input, I probably would have never gone through the trouble to wire any of this so it’s cool that it is there! The previous owner also left the ceiling mounts for those speakers. We recently bought a couch and we’re still waiting for it to be delivered, but I wanted to get the surround sound wired up so we can start enjoying the space for chilling sooner than later.

I got some basic speakers from Amazon, not Amazon basic but Monoprice. They were $140 USD which for sound equipment is pretty cheap imo. I am not much of an audiophile and I haven’t ever had a surround system myself so these seemed like a good starting point. I also picked up a Sony receiver and some stands. Here is where the cursed part begins.

First, Amazon sent the receiver, the speakers, and the speaker wire in 3 separate shipments over 3 days. Very annoying. I got the speakers in the second shipment and check the existing mounts to see if they fit. Of course they don’t! I assumed that speaker mount threads were a standard size but apparently not. The existing mounts had some tiny screw and the speakers I got said they use a “standard” 1/4” thread. So I went to BestBuy to get a different mount that would work. They’re remodeling the BestBuy and nobody could find anything! Even though the website said there was one in the store, they literally could not find it. Usually I order stuff online and pick it up to avoid these shenanigans but this time I decided not to. Bad choice I guess. I ordered them for pickup and I will get them later today, but I’m not convinced they will even work for me. More on that in a bit.

So at this point, I had all of the pieces and was eager to start laying things out and making sure everything works in case I have to ship anything back (I really hope I don’t have to, very much dreading this in fact). I started unboxing everything and planing out my next moves. I wouldn’t be able to mount the rear speakers until the next evening, but I could at least put together the stands for the front speakers and connect 3/5 of the speakers. It took me like an hour to get the stand together, mostly because the bottom had 10 or so little sticky felt pads to peel and stick. Very tedious! The problem came with the last step when I tried to actually mount the speaker on the stand: Either the screws that came with the stand don’t fit the thread in the speaker! I’m not sure which one is incorrect, the screws or the speakers’ mounting thread but if it is the speakers then the wall mount from BestBuy won’t work either!

So I’m not quite sure what to do. I think I’m going to get the mount from BestBuy and go to the hardware store to get some of the correct(?) screws and hope it works out. Between this whole surround sound fiasco and the oven part arriving broken today, I feel particularly cursed lately. Maybe it’s just homeownership?