When we bought our house four years ago, it also came with some of the basic home appliances like cooking range, dishwasher and microwave. Some of the other stuff though you had to buy on your own, like the refrigerator, washer and dryer. As anybody who’s bought any major (or minor, for that matter) appliance will tell you, these things have an uncanny ability to act up or break down just when the warranty has just expired. This is what happened to our washer. One day, out of the blue, while I was about to start laundry, it decided that it wasn’t in the mood for washing and flashed this cryptic “F DL ” message while beeping incessantly. No matter what buttons you pressed, it still kept beeping and flashing the error code.

So out came my first line of defense: the washer manual. Straight to the troubleshooting section I went, only to find out that “F DL” means some sort of “door locked” malfunction, and that to fix it I should check the door assembly. Duh! How can you check the door assembly when the door is locked? To be honest, I never really expected much from the manual but I figured it was worth a shot.

So my next line of defense, as any IT professional worth their salt will turn to, is the Internet. I submitted my plea to the almighty Google, and it responded by giving me links to a few discussion groups and blogs dedicated to appliance fixing and washer/dryer how-to’s. It took me all of 30 seconds to realize that this was not an isolated incident (which made me feel a little better actually), and that this sort of thing has happened to a lot of people who, like me, had based their washer purchase on the manufacturer’s good reputation but ended up frustrated and disappointed. It wasn’t difficult to find a discussion thread dedicated to the dreaded “F DL” problem, and I soon found one post that had a credible-sounding solution to the problem. Even though the solution involved taking out the washer’s control unit and soldering some apparently loose joints, I wasn’t too worried. We had electronics classes in high school and besides, I’ve always been tinkering with anything that plugs into an outlet (whether or not it was meant to) ever since I was a kid. What did worry me was the fact that the dryer was stacked on top of the washer, and it would take at least four guys to bring down the dryer.

So for a few times we had to do laundry at a friend’s house, until we hosted an informal dinner party and I finally had enough manpower to take down the dryer (and no, I generally don’t make my guests carry dryers but this was a clothing emergency). The next night I took out the control unit and soldered the loose joints as instructed. Although I was a bit skeptical I proceeded to reassemble the parts, and when I turned on the washer it worked!

For a few weeks, that is. After a while it started giving the “F DL”–and then a new one, “F 11″–error code. It wasn’t a big deal at first, because you could get around it by hitting “Cancel” then starting again (sort of like rebooting Windows). But it got to a point where even “rebooting” it won’t even work, so I went back to the Internet and found a tip to slam (yes, slam) the door. As weird as it sounded, I tried it, and it surprisingly worked. We were able to do our laundry relatively hassle free for a few months, until last week when even the “slamming door” technique wouldn’t work.

So off I went to see Dr. Google again, and this time I found another discussion group (I can’t believe how many people are complaining against this washer and the manufacturer doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it!). One of the posted solutions seemed barbaric, but it got a lot of positive responses. What the author said to do was while the washer is beeping and displaying the “F DL” error, give the top right corner of the washer a good hit (yes, hit) of your fist. He went on to say that you might get an “F 11″ error afterwards, but just hit Cancel then Start, then you should be fine.

Now slamming the door is one thing, but hitting it? It brought back childhood memories of tv sets with bad reception that instantly got better with a good slap on the side (come to think of it I still do this from time to time). But at this point I was out of other options (short of calling in the repair guy, but that would be tantamount to surrender) so I decided to try it anyway. All I can say is, God truly works in mysterious ways. It worked right off the bat, and not only that, it also did the “F 11″ error as described in the post and true enough, I just press Cancel then Start and I’m good to go again. One of the responses to the post best describes my reaction:

“Unbelievable! We spend $1,000 on our machines, and have to beat it up to start it! gggrrrr”

My thoughts exactly. But hey, for now it beats going to the laundromat!

There are many science items come up when you google for the phrase “why people cry”. Here is one of the extract from the web,

We have tear ducts to lubricate and protect our eyes from dust and other particles. The ducts are under the upper eyelids and produce a salty liquid—a tear-–-that gets spread throughout the eye after each blink. Animals too have the ability to produce tears, but not necessarily for the same reasons that we humans produce them.

The above statement is the answer for why people cry ? Now let’s talk about the benefit of crying.

God started his creating with two different species, Man and Woman. Each one are unique in their abilities and different. Hence Man and Woman are not comparable so there is not question of being equal to one another. I will talk about this in another post since its never ending and mind blowing.

Getting back to the benefits, one of the unique quality of a woman is the tolerance towards pain. Yes, it’s true that woman can with stand for more pain than a man. This is the reason why woman get pregnant. On the contrary Man have more tolerance toward emotion(s).

When people cry in emotion then the stress is relieved from your heart. That’s the benefit. So what the heck is this to do with all the above so called theory of man and woman ? Here is the link

When stress is less on heart people live longer. Since man are tend to with stand stress and emotion, men would not cry as often as women and tend to get heart attacks more than women.

All my fellow men, we shall now make a club and gather once in a week at least to cry out loud.