We chose life in a swampy wilderness so we could observe the waterfowl, otters, gators and other critters, but we also enjoy watching football, especially this time of year. A screen-within-screen approach yields the best of both worlds.
Photo is from Friday, as eagle-eyed readers who know their bowl game schedule may deduce. (Go ‘Dores!) But we’ve got the same set-up on tap all weekend.
Did a deep house cleaning yesterday (by my standards; I suspect Mr. Cole’s are far more rigorous). It was exhausting since I had really let the place go and didn’t have holiday guests to motivate me earlier.
I despise cleaning, but the results sure are satisfying. At least until the dogs track mud through the house again.
We’re supposed to get lots of rain soon — the same front that menaced valued commenter Nukular Biskits overnight (hope you’re okay, pal!) appears to be barreling toward us.
The local frogs are now confirming human/AI weather predictions by elaborate trilling, so I believe it.
***
Speaking of goddamn fucking AI, which I am beginning to suspect is the fucking devil sent to torment us in the guise of a “helpful” tool, I think Apple’s latest “upgrade” is responsible for doubling my text error rate with bullshit “corrections” that render snippets of prose incoherent.
I could turn it off — it may come to that! But it does save time when it works correctly. The problem is it’s aggressively wresting control to make matters worse.
God help you if you fat-finger a space instead of a letter in the middle of a word. Then it just flat makes up the dumbest shit to fill in the blank. Feh!
***
Do any of y’all have a portable induction cooktop? I’m considering one since I hate the fucking cooktop on our current (and likely last) stove.
The oven is fine, and the cooktop works well enough for boiling water and simple stuff like that, but it sucks for any type of cooking that requires precise temperature control or finesse. I’ve had it with split sauces, scorched fish fillets, etc.
If you have a portable cooktop, I’d be grateful for any insights and/or recs/warnings you could share.
Other than that, open thread!
Baud
I’ve been relying on AI to comment here for years.
Baud
BTW, I was recently passing through Florida. Beautiful birds, and that was just in the urban areas.
Suzanne
I have definitely noticed an uptick in dumb errors. I do most commenting here from my tablet, and typing on those is always iffy. But have definitely noticed more WTF moments.
The dog woke me up way too early this morning. She has beds upstairs in the bedroom, and downstairs in the living room. But at 6 AM, she decided that she wanted to go sleep on the other one, so she barked me awake. She fell back asleep, but I can’t!
Suzanne
Also….. I need to pick out some floor tile. I went to a flooring store yesterday and was very meh on everything I saw. So now I am trying to pick out samples from TileBar.
Interior design is so hard, y’all.
prostratedragon
That Kubrick was some visionary, eh?
From the cloud map, looks as if between the river and the Appalachians, if it’s not raining now, it either just stopped or is about to. The part that exits in the FL panhandle must be headed toward Betty C.
BretH
A clean house makes me happy. It’s going on the 2nd day of darkness and rain here in VA so I’ll wait to clean until it passes – same muddy paws issue here.
I’ll be interested to hear comments about induction as I need a new stove (in a different kitchen location) and although a long time gas stove user I am considering induction.
Kayelless
After decades of cooking on gas burners, we installed an induction range, and boy, it’s absolutely wonderful for both cooking and baking. I like the convection feature in the oven and used it recently to finish off a 15 lb turkey that hit a stall after four hours in the ceramic smoker, just 45 minutes to get the bird to 165F. Ours is the LG with knobs as I have little faith in the longevity of the circuit boards controlling those touch screen controls for the burners.
sentient ai from the future
re: text messaging, i can hardly imagine a less useful use-case for AI than correcting errors in text messages. who the fuck are you communicating with who you can’t trust to read-through your errors and either ask questions if something is genuinely confusing, or just figure it out?
i have a portable induction cooktop and even bought a portable induction wok heater thing because electric generally sucks and if i can, i want to avoid using hydrocarbons to cook. it works well, the times i do pull it out but you need to ensure your cookware is compatible with it. i know someone who upgraded to an induction stovetop and it made their 20yo all-clad setup completely unusable, because there isnt enough magnetic material in it (stainless/aluminum sandwich) for the induction to work on. cast iron works well though, including enameled cast iron. it is a marked improvement over the common resistive electric coils.
NotMax
Did someone say frog?
:)
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
I don’t have an induction hob yet, but I have used them a couple times and I am shopping for one. Best advice: cook a step lower than conventional electric, and watch more carefully. Induction heats fast and as evenly as the pan/pot is made.
Also, make sure your cookware is compatible. Copper pots, copper-bottom pots, anodized aluminum, and other non-magnetic materials are not, for example (buh-bye Revereware, Corning and Simplex).
Baud
@sentient ai from the future:
You would say that.
Kayelless
@sentient ai from the future: good point about the cookware. Luckily the Cuisinart set works well on our range, but I was really sad to learn that my 20 qt All-Clad stock pot is useless. My Le Creuset pots and cast iron skillets work great.
NeenerNeener
I’ve had an induction hot plate for about 10 years that I got with “Kohls Cash”. Right now I’m using it to heat big pots of water to get the humidity up in my house. It shuts itself off after a certain amount of time, maybe 30 or 40 minutes. I don’t know if it’s supposed to do that or not but I’m ok with it. It’s got a bunch of function buttons that I’ve never used. I think it’s a “Nuwave” and Amazon has one for about $56 right now.
Get a steel adapter plate for those pots that have aluminum bottoms.
I put an induction stove in my last house when I upgraded all the kitchen appliances. The new house has a new, regular electric stove so I’m not in any hurry to upgrade that yet.
pinacacci
My experience with a portable induction cooktop was that it had 2 temperatures: warm and LAVA. No in between or sliding scale variability at all although theoretically those were supposed to be features. To be fair it was a cheapie from Aldi
Eta scorched a pan or two then threw it out
cmorenc
Life is much smipler if you turn autocorrect off, but there’s downsides to taht.
Spanky
@Baud:
How do you “pass through” a peninsula?
mrmoshpotato
My bones would enjoy a good storm this morning.
Spanky
@Suzanne:
Especially for folks who have a taste beyond the trite.
Betsy
Apple is making itself more and more like Microsoft with every update. I’m thoroughly disgusted with iOS 18.whatever. My merlin app no longer recognizes the simplest bird songs ever since I updated, and AutoCorrect is even less correct than it was with the previous update.
The shortcuts and menus and swipe screens to get to settings and so on are all in different places now, and many have added intrusive “features” that make navigation more difficult than before.
It’s exactly as though they hired some new manager from Microsoft, who had to put new signature “improvements” everything to make a name for himself in the company
and also, I’m just getting tired of learning a new “improvement“ every four to eight months for decades on end. Life is to short and I’m to old. (I know it’s “too” but I’m leaving it the way apple helpfully broke it)
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@cmorenc: I am so stealing “smipler.”
mrmoshpotato
@Spanky:
Sexually. Any questions?
pinacacci
Recently voice to text kept fixing “for a while” to “falafel.” Every time. If I yell the phrase I actually want multiple times eventually I get a block of text that will stay so then I delete all the extra “for a while” and the first “falafel” and then I just use my giant fingers on the tiny letter blocks instead.
mrmoshpotato
@pinacacci: Mmmmmmmm deliciously wrong.
sentient ai from the future
@Spanky: first the peninsula eats you, and then you pass through it.
Spanky
Autocorrect keeps changing my wife’s name to Data. She looks nothing like him.
sentient ai from the future
@NeenerNeener: counterpoint: steel adapter plates are absolute worthless garbage. you are much better off getting cheap induction-ready cookware from e.g. ikea, you will wind up much less murder-y
bluefoot
I have two friends who were each redoing their kitchens and each got a portable induction cooktop. They both loved them, one to the point he’s now looking at induction ranges. I think his portable came from IKEA? I don’t know where my other friend got hers. She still uses it a lot.
p.a.
My main stove is 1958 GE with calrod burners (it works so it’s not going anywhere), the cellar kitchen (no Italian, Portuguese, French Canadian house is finished without one) is a 1928 kerosene-and-gas cast iron anachronism.
I used to curse the electric for its slow temp adjustment, then I saw old b&w French Chef reruns and Julia Child was doing that classic stuff on a tv studio electric stove, so I sucked it up. One trick (as long as you’re not using all the burners at once) is to pre set a second burner to the next temp you’ll need, usually lower, and just move your pan to it. Waste of energy, (but this is ‘Murca after all) and be careful of the naked burner as it heats up.
WTFGhost
Induction cooktops are fairly good, but I haven’t used mine for much of anything, yet. First, you need a sufficiently magnetizable metal on the bottom, and stuff like cast iron works really well, because a lot of induction-ready cookware can have flaws that you *don’t* want making noise (but they will…).
That said, the miracle of them is, they only heat the pan, so if you buy a 1500 watt induction cooktop, all 1500 watts are going into heating the pain, not the surrounding air. Heat up a pan to sear a steak, you have a hot pan, not a hot kitchen. Throw the steak down on the heat, and all 1500 watts is going into keeping the temperature at “sear,” not making the cook feel seared.
They can be used for sous vide, I’ve heard, so you can combine two fads in one. (I don’t mean to belittle sous vide or induction, but, there’s so many ways to cook, you *will* have fads. It’s a good thing, too, because it means there are bursts of instructions for newbies and plenty of recipes, etc..)
Texting error rates may be caused by caused by screen problems – sometimes just a good cleaning is enough. , and I know cleaning has eliminated *that* bit of deviltry. There are, of course ,other bits of deviltry, and, a strong suspicion that an infinite number of monkeys want to redo Macbeth as a cheery musical, and have hacked Apple intelligence to assist them.
Suzanne
@pinacacci:
So, this makes me harken back to Bill O’Reilly attempting to have secksy talk with his employee, and he told her that he wanted to rub her down in the shower with a falafel.
Evergreen.
Lily
With all the gators and birds, so many dinosaur remnants would be an interesting balance off the high tech of football yet football.
Pavlov’s Man
Got my first portable induction cooktop about 15 months ago. I loved it so much that I almost never used the gas range which limited cooking to one dish at a time. So, we got a few months later. Both are Nuwave, model 30702. I absolutely love them and almost never use the gas range any more – maybe 3-4 times since we got the first Nuwave.
Others have commented on the obvious limitations- some cookware might need a steel adapter plate which works very well. Huge advantage is very fast response which can also be a disadvantage (heating) until you get used to it. Another great aspect is greatly decreased fire hazards… Too, it doesn’t heat up unless there’s cookware on it so while the temperature dicplay shows, it doesn’t heat until you press start.
Major disadvantage – I can’t get temperature high enough as with a larger gas burner, so it’s limited my cooking in some ways. I suppose one can stir fry much smaller amounts and set aside to combine and complete 2nd step which really hurts because I love this recipe from Kenji López-Alt for Phat Bai Horapha (Thai-style beef with basil and chiles) which is the absolute bomb.
Suzanne
@Spanky:
I actually joke with my interior design colleagues that I have bad taste. I’m very practical and anti-trend. As a result, I’m often like, “Don’t give them that fancy detail or nice material…. they won’t be able to keep it clean”, etc. I’m very glad that they all seem to be collectively getting over gray.
Irony: I just ordered some samples, and autocorrect kept changing “slate” to “flate” in the search box. Now, as I type this, it wants to correct “flate” to “flare” and autocorrect can get fucked.
Professor Bigfoot
I am convinced that Crowley’s greatest feat was autocorrect, and his Hellish masters promoted him for it.
Now he’s come up with this AI madness and I think Satan Himself is thinking “now, that is a demon deserving further promotion!”
#GoodOmens
Dr. Fungus
My Vollrath pro grade portable oven served me like a champ until I upgraded my regular electric stovetop—which I rarely used—to induction.
I still keep the portable one on hand for road trips. All the temperature control of gas, without the smell or hassle. Recommended.
pinacacci
Yes. That definitely played into why I got so mad about it.
Spanky
Ten years ago we switched from old style electric to gas (propane, actually) since we both grew up with gas stoves and hated our old electric. In the past couple of years, of course, the news about air quality and great reviews of induction ranges had us planning a switch back once the gas range crapped out.
Then on Christmas (of course) the stove wouldn’t hold heat and we thought we had our chance. But I decided to swap out the $30 temperature sensor to see if that fixed the problem. Sadly(?) it did, so we’ll have to wait for a more fatal (to the stove) failure before making the switch. Data is already prepping by buying only induction friendly pans.
twbrandt
I’m waiting for a plumber to call me back regarding the water coming up through the floor drain in my basement.
How’s your Sunday morning going?
Spanky
@Suzanne: What the fuck is “flate”? I at least thought autocorrect uses real words.
stinger
@Spanky:
ISWYDT LOL
Spanky
@twbrandt: Better than yours, but since you didn’t say “sewage”, I’ll remind you that it could be worse.
Derp
I’ve had a portable induction cooker for over a year now, and it’s worked great. It’s a Mueller brand from Target. I wanted to test induction cooktop before investing in an induction stove. I finally made that plunge last month when Lowe’s had them on sale, and I’m very happy with my new stove!
twbrandt
@Spanky: oh yes, it could be worse.
Kay
This has really blown up on TikTok. People of all political persuasions are horrified.
THere’s kind of “companion” footage too- apparently three of the guards who beat Brooks to death also brutally beat another (handcuffed) inmate, leaving permanent damage. There’s photos of that too.
prostratedragon
On Greg Gumbel:
Baud
@Kay:
Sounds like not even the union is defending them.
Thank God for tech.
Van Buren
My sister is driving from Atlanta to Eastern Virginia rn and my mom is very nervous about the weather.
I have a pacemaker and the surgeon told me just to be on the safe side avoid induction stoves….I would think this is being really really on the safe side, but I’m not an EE, so who knows.
TBone
If this is the case, I’ll continue riding my unicorn to and fro
https://bsky.app/profile/fancysplace.bsky.social/post/3legsdy46j22e
Kay
@Baud:
I think it’s the “all in a days work” nature of the footage that horrifies people. They stop, wash their hands, chit chat, then one or another steps in and resume beating him to death.
Baud
@Kay: The banality of evil.
Phylllis
@Suzanne: You mean like my fancy baseboards, that I have come to despise with heat of a thousand fiery nuns? Give me simple shoe-molding any day.
Geminid
@Van Buren: I think the drive from Atlanta to eastern Virginia should be unevenful now that last night’s storm has made it though. The Virginia Piedmont forecast is for a quiet, rainy morning, and it should be similar for I-85 across the Carolinas.
Thunderstorms are expected this evening but it’s a 9-10 hour drive from Atlanta to Tidewater Virginia so your sister should make it ahead of those storms,
That is, so long as she doesn’t linger too long at a Stuckeys along the way. Tell her to grab those pecan logs and git!
WaterGirl
@twbrandt: Better than yours. Not how you want to wake up on Sunday morning.
TBone
Auto AI correctbot recently changed “other” to “threesome” in a comment I made and I have questions. A lot of questions that are better off unasked.
Phylllis
@Geminid: I think Buc-ees is the new Stuckey’s.
Central Planning
@Spanky: Autocorrupt changed my wife’s name to Slices. We are sticking with that.
TBone
Speaking of questions: My elderly couple neighbors have had their adult kids visiting since before Xmas. Today there is a king sized mattress propped up out on the curb in front of their house. Our locale does not do large trash pickup. DelCo had designated large item trash pickup days, but here you must haul it away under your own power. My questions include how long we’re gonna have to look at that mattress which is collecting a lot of extra water weight in the rain, and how/why someone thought it was a good idea to leave it out there in the first place.
Ohio Mom
@twbrandt: Been there, done that. For us, it was tree roots blocking the sewage pipe.
My experience with weekend plumbing disasters is that you end up with price-gouging plumbers who are various levels of creepy or incompetent. The good plumbers don’t work the weekends, at least our regular one doesn’t.
Good luck, you have my sympathy.
Gin & Tonic
I am frustrated with our stove/range, an expensive Thermador 6-burner (36″) that we installed during a major kitchen remodel 10-12(?) years ago. The two leftmost burners stopped working – they all have fancy electronic ignition, but the leftmost are more sophisticated in that on x-low simmer they actually shut off and turn back on. So they shit the bed a week before Thanksgiving. Got a service guy in a week or two later, and the problem is that to get to the control board you have to take the whole top off. And the screws that hold the burner heads into the gas pipes (venturi?) underneath the top that has to be removed have seized. They are immovable. So the top can’t come off. The only alternative is to drill the screws out, which ruins the burner heads and venturi, which you then obviously have to replace, making this a several-thousand-dollar job.
So now we have a four-burner range/stove that’s effectively non-repairable – which we spent something like $6k on new. In my considered opinion, this is an object which should last more than a dozen years.
sab
Re AI: I remember that back when I still had autocheck. It would “correct” my typos to such an extent that sometimes I couldn’t figure out what I had meant to write.
Steep taught me how to fix it. It’s been smooth sailing (with typos) ever since.
sab
@twbrandt: We had that right after Thanksgiving. Good luck. Ours was a huge hairball left over from the previous owner, snagged on a tree root.
TBone
@Ohio Mom: you speak the truth. Any time period that is near a weekend or holiday increases the chances of needing a plumber exponentially and also decreases the chances of finding a good one inversely.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: +1
We often have Home Town and related HGTV shows on in the background. There was one fairly early episode where they had the local craft printer artist guy make some custom printed wallpaper for behind the stove. I mean, I understand the beauty of it, and I understand the cost of tiling a backsplash, but wallpaper? There??!
It reminded me of the infamous episode of Trading Spaces where Hildi glued straw up on the walls of a family’s home with kids who had allergies… (They were clearly trolling the viewers, but it worked.)
Good luck with your renovation! Keep Hildi far, far away!!1
Best wishes,
Scott.
Spanky
@Ohio Mom: We’re not so unfortunate as you, since we have a regular plumber who’s been good to us for the 30 years we’ve been here, and now his sons have taken over, so we have continuity. They’ve been here a couple of times on a Sunday.
It’s a real good idea when you move into a new-to-you house to get weird of mouth recommendations for a plumber, electrician, and hvac and give them a tryout before an emergency. Although 30 years in and I still don’t have an electrician I want to call. Not as easy as I may make it sound.
TBone
@Spanky: weird of mouth hahaha autocorrupt strikes again!
Spanky
@Gin & Tonic: Our appliances have all crapped out more or less on 5-6 year schedules. The ones closest to the panel go first, so I’m sure it’s surges during lightning storms. I got serious about power conditioning a couple of years back and we may be over that plague. Fancy electronics are a bane, but mostly necessary for some wash and dry cycles. I’m not convinced my fridge needs all those microchips, though.
tobie
I had a two-burner portable induction cooktop in Germany. I loved the speed for cooking things and after a while I learned how to regulate the temperature to some extent but never felt like I had a lot of variation between super hot and very slow cooking. This was a cheap portable unit. A slightly more expensive one might give you more control. I hate reading customer reviews on websites but I imagine in this case it would help. Ikea led the way on induction cooking in the US, so their portable may be slightly better than the rest.
narya
I’ve used induction for two chunks of time: in pastry school in 2005 and in 2020 during the kitchen reno. I sorta wish I’d gone for induction during the reno, but they’ve improved even in four years. The big expense would be upgrading my electric wiring.
Spanky
@TBone: Ah shizz.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott:
I still remember from years ago, a Car Talk episode where some young lady called in for advice on covering her car in sequins, and Tom and Ray seriously discussed options with her, at considerable length.
Pavlov’s Man
In case it’s not been posted yet, JoJo’s take on MAGA-Trump’s H-1B war, using video from Mean Girls.
https://bsky.app/profile/jojofromjerz.bsky.social/post/3leenpb7zi22k
twbrandt
@Ohio Mom: Thanks. Fortunately a local plumber who has done work for me before is on his way. I’m sure I’ll be charged a Sunday premium, and frankly I don’t blame him for charging that, but I know he’s good.
JMG
@Ohio Mom: We’ve had our plumbing company for over 30 years. It’s a fantastic family operation. When the heat went out the day before Thanksgiving, we got service within an hour. The man who answered the call is the grandson of the founder who first serviced our home not that we’re old or anything.
Kay
Stabucks strike ends without a contract.
Obviously Starbucks and Amazon are holding out until Trump takes office and labor law enforcement ends. Still, they organized 150 additional stores in 2024, for a total of 540, which is a very successful year.
Labor unions are to my mind one of the few institutions still standing – non government, obviously, but still – so I consider them a strength that could be built upon going forward.
TBone
@Spanky: no worries, it was fun and on topic!
Another Scott
@Spanky: Our 1963 GE drop-in electric range may be a cautionary tale. Only one burner worked when we bought the place, but it was easy to find replacements and it’s been “fine” ever since. It was ahead of its time – push buttons!! Who needs more than 4 power settings on a cooktop??!
:-/
Other than smoking whenever it’s used (60 years of hard to clean spillage), the main problem is that the buzzer on the clock/timer will go off on its own at weird times. Walking into the kitchen and hearing the buzzer going off first thing in the morning is annoying.
We’re going to end up replacing it before it “dies”. Probably with an induction of some sort (the idea of 2 separate (smaller) ovens seems appealing at the moment – we don’t cook giant hunks of flesh – but LG doesn’t seem to have an induction version of that. Hmm…).
I’m glad we didn’t do a reno around 20 years ago when we were thinking about it, because we would have gotten a gas range. They cook most things great, but aren’t so great in tightly sealed energy efficient homes because of obvious (if one thinks about it) issues with leakage and combustion products.
Good luck with the searching. Having Data there will be a great help I’m sure! ;-)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
LMAO, so on point.
My current project has an interior designer who hates the facility’s standard water/ice machine. I mean, I will grant that it isn’t the most attractive thing, but, like….. get over it.
Geminid
@TBone: Voice-to-text is the worst. I once had a customer whose brick chimney was slowly disintegrating during the winter months. A mutual friend got us together and I went over with a ladder and checked it out. The chimney top was cracked and letting in water that was freezing and cracking the brick faces off.
So I texted her a proposal to fix the problem when the weather warmed in a couple months. That was in early February.
But a week later I saw an ominous weather forecast: three days of rain followed by a deep freeze. I told her I’d better get up there and tarp the chimney top before it fell apart.
I “got ‘er done” the next day just as the first rain drops fell, and texted a picture to my customer who was at work. She was very relieved and grateful, so she sent a text thanking me and asking me to please send her my invoice ASAP.
But she used Voice-to-text, and it came out, “Please send me your ass ASAP.” I replied that I needed to keep my ass with me but I would add a charge to the bill when I finally did the repair.
We had a good laugh about it a few months later when we finally met for the first time.
TBone
@Pavlov’s Man: excellent
tobie
@Geminid: Holy Smokes. Poster Bianca heats her Mountain Hacienda upstairs and downstairs with wood and you climb ladders to roof tops. BJ is full of sharp commenters who are also jocks. I feel humbled.
Nukular Biskits
Thanks for the shout-out, BettyC!
Me and all the kinfolk from here to Meridian, MS, over to Mobile, AL, present and accounted for with no damage.
TBone
@Geminid: ha! I disabled voice to text microphone permissions when it started telling me it could record anything I said any time it wanted to. I suspect it still does so without explicit permission since a lot of stuff on my phone doesn’t work without microphone access so I had to let some apps have permission. I suspect that it records even when phone is not in use because of weirdly specific ads targeting things I’ve spoken of only to hubby with phone off but in the room with us. Yes, I am wearing a tinfoil hat.
Geminid
@tobie: I used to climb roofs and work on chimneys, but this happened five years ago. I probably could do it again but I’d want to get in shape first. I’ve been very lazy and sedentary lately, just working part-time and on the ground.
Nukular Biskits
@TBone:
You’re not paranoid if it’s really happening!
Seriously, same here. In fact, I’ve been conducting a little experiment the last couple of week where when I get in the car to go somewhere, I start loudly saying, “I WANT A TRAMPOLINE!”. I’m curious if I’ll start seeing ads for trampolines.
But, WRT speech-to-text and AI, my experiment might not work. I have a pronounced Southern accent which really confuses the phone, apparently. And like BettyC, I’ve seen it transcribe all sorts of nonsense to the point it would have been quicker to have just texted the damned message in the first place.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Another Scott:
The people involved with just about any HGTV program are lucky I’m not Genghis Khan.
tobie
@Geminid: Caution is the better part of valor. I’m still impressed with your past spiderwoman adventures.
Suzanne
@Geminid:
A similar autocorrect story: I resigned at one firm I worked at, and I told my boss before I left that she could feel free to contact me with any project-related questions. So a few weeks later, she had a question about doors and hardware on a project. I wrote back that I had used hardware from the company Assa Abloy — or at least I thought I did. Autocorrect changed that to “ass a lot”. She responded with a lot of laughter.
Just now, when typing that, autocorrect changed it to “assault alloy”.
Glory b
@TBone: Those who do things like end up with municipal citations mailed to their addresses, fining them & inviting them to appeal if they disagree.
You could always make an anonymous complaint call.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: Ouch. :-(
I don’t understand those hugely expensive kitchen appliances. They look great in Town and Country spreads but the online reviews of them at places like Consumer Reports are often horrible. Of course, with online reviews one doesn’t know if people have ridiculous expectations (“there’s a scratch on the back and the delivery was 30 minutes late!! I’d give zero stars if I could!!11”) or what. I would think that the manufacturer would try to make the machines bulletproof and have great warranties, or at least build the price of 1-2 service visits into the purchase price, to try to justify the huge expense, but it seems like they don’t care. Maybe their “real” customers are folks who do high-end renovations and then flip the place before the appliances are actually used for any length of time. :-(
There seem to be more and more high-end-looking appliances made in China showing up on Amazon. Yeah, they might only last 5-10 years too, but if they cost 1/3 or 1/2 as much… Wolf and Thermadore and the like better look out and get their acts together… :-/
Seriously, I hope you find a decent solution. I’d be furious too. Good luck!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Barbara
@Gin & Tonic: Have you called the manufacturer? This is very frustrating. We managed to fix our oven, dryer and microwave oven recently because relatively obvious stuff failed and could be replaced DIY — well, obvious to my husband.
We waited for months for a dishwasher repair on an Asko that has been trouble free for more than 7 years. First it was parts that were back ordered, then needing to order a special clamp – and then realizing it needed to be taken off site so that parts could be properly installed, which happened two days after Christmas.
Your cooktop sounds like an expensive item – it’s possible that the manufacturer could repair it, but it would definitely put me off buying another item made by them.
frosty
@Another Scott:
We bought a new gas range a couple of years ago and it probably won’t crap out before we move out someday in the next ten years.
I’m not too worried about indoor air quality though. This 100-year old foursquare is the opposite of tightly sealed and energy efficient!
Glory b
@Kay: im skeptical.
I remember in 2016, a local outlet (I’m in Pittsburgh) interviewed several union pfficials who said that the unions officially endorsed Clinton & Democrats, but knew that a significant majority of their rank & file members were voting for Trump.
The same happened this year, they all embraced Biden & touted his help with securing their pensions, his support in collective bargaining & expanding manufacturing, then proceeded to endorse Trump, saying that’s what their membership wanted.
Barbara
@Another Scott: I suspect you’re right about the market being mostly contractors rather than homeowners. When I redid my kitchen I looked for mid-range appliances made by solid brands but nothing fancier than a convection oven. The art of cooking is a factor of human time, effort and attention to detail, not high end appliances.
jowriter
@twbrandt: Pick two out of three: good, fast, cheap. You will never get three.
Glory b
The Consumer Reports Top Picks of the Year issue, in their “Best Kitchen Helpers” mentions the Duxtop 9600LS induction burner, $110.
Suzanne
@Glory b: I saw that same interview (or a similar one)…. the union leadership and the membership were not in alignment at all.
Doug R
@Nukular Biskits:
My Garmin GPS has voice command and activated once when I had a loud burp.
I thought why not see what happens and burped again. It then found the route home.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@frosty:
Hah! That describes our situation as well. Purchased a new gas range at the height of the Plague Times, took 5 months to be delivered. We had gutted the kitchen as part of the historic renovation project.
We’re not in a Square, 1905 “city cottage”, same 1st floor footprint as a Square tho, just not a full upstairs. Same draftiness and energy efficiency. ;)
kindness
I had to turn off autocorrect years ago. I spell poorly to begin with and too often I didn’t catch what it would change things to so I’d end up having to send another text apologizing for my last text. It isn’t bad on my laptop but my cell phone….damn, my fingers and that small screen ends up being a cage match.
I grew up on electric stovetops. My father (born in the 20’s) didn’t trust gas as he saw several of his neighbors places burn down when something went wrong. I didn’t hate electric stovetops till I moved into a place of my own that had gas. We remodeled the kitchen 14 years ago and put in a 6 burner commercial type cooktop. It still works great. Yea I’m polluting with it but until it breaks I’m not switching over. Who ever buys the place after I go will have to do that upgrade most likely.
Chat Noir
We bought the duxtop model BT-200DZ/9600LS/9610LS earlier this year and love it. I keep the manual nearby when I’m cooking so I can adjust the temperature as needed. It even has a timer and a “keep warm” feature, both of which are very helpful.
Nukular Biskits
@kindness:
So … “the floor is lava” wasn’t a game for you!
Another Scott
@Glory b: I subscribe to CR and have for years and think they’re valuable and important.
But their rankings sometimes don’t make any sense. I remember some reviews of SLR cameras where they ranked a clearly inferior model substantially higher than a clearly better one. Maybe they were factoring in cost more than I thought they should. Dunno – I don’t remember the details. But it taught me that one has to look carefully at the details of their rankings and not just pick the thing with the highest score. (I think they often say in the fine print that differences of 1-3 points aren’t/might not be meaningful in their rankings.)
Not picking on you, just adding more information that might or might not be helpful! :-)
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Bupalos
Induction is great technology. All the energy goes in the pan, instantly. The implementation can be annoying. The highly rated very expensive Bosch I often use at my neighbor’s is a layout of touch control which I find infuriating. And 1-7 are various degrees of “slow simmer,” 8 is “on,” 9 is “standard nuclear reactor,” and 10 is “heat death of the universe.”
Though I’d still prefer that to one that shuts itself off before a real sear level.
Get one with a nob that has good reviews for controllability and reaching a high temp without shutting off and I’d think you’d be very happy. The IRA should be giving the vast majority of us 50 or 100% rebates on induction cooktops but the implementation was so delayed and fucked up and left to malevolent states to enshittify that I hesitate to suggest even seeing where Floriduh is on that.
Big Fly
@NeenerNeener:
Re: steel adaptor plate: readily available. Instead, I use an old, flat cast iron pan lid most often. When things fit, i.e.,1 and 2 qt saucers, I often use a cast iron pan; works great, too, for my small aluminum Moka coffee pot.
I’ve forever been a gas cooker fan, but my GE induction beats that all to hell.
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: hahahaha thank you!
Juju
@Gin & Tonic: If I had known you back then I would have told you to get something other than a Thermador. They look like beautifully made appliances, but I have never met anyone who’s had a Thermador appliance say they would ever get another one, or recommend them. The nicest thing I’ve ever heard about Thermador is that they can be temperamental. I have an Amana smooth top with halogen burners. I’d recommend that, but I don’t think they still make Amana appliances.
kindness
@Nukular Biskits: I was pretty good at controlling the electric stoves my parents had. Some of the rentals I had as an adult were less controllable. Learning how to cook on crappy stoves with cheap (I was young and poor) cookware took some doing.
Juju
@Another Scott: I have seen that episode and I thought putting wallpaper on an area that should be backsplash or something that can be scrubbed was ridiculous. A person who would choose something like that is a person who has never actually cooked anything. No one with cooking experience and common sense would put something like that in a working kitchen.
NeenerNeener
@Big Fly: Hmmm. I never thought about repurposing the old cast iron frying pans that Dad put through the dishwasher for adapter plates. Thanks for the tip!
Bill Arnold
@Barbara:
I’d been putting off looking at the innards of a 15YO GE over-stove hood for a while. The display wasn’t even lighting up.
Finally found the official repair decision tree diagram online, and the top of the tree was (roughly) “check to see if any of the buttons are stuck”. Voila, after tapping one of the buttons, the entire unit started working again.
So it’s mixed; on the plus side, online information is wildly better than it was 25 years ago, if one can find it. (And repair videos on youtube/etc are a DYI game changer.)
Personally, as a paranoid tech person, I try to find devices with no computer(s) in them if possible (e.g. toaster oven). And have surge suppressors for most things with computers in them, and a UPS for the router (wifi, phone).
Tandem
I apologize if I am repeating what has already been said about portable induction burners; I admit to not reading all 100+ comments! Anyway, the thing to remember is that the portable ones do not generate as much energy as those built into cooktops, so water doesn’t boil blindingly fast etc. This means you may wind up setting it higher than you initially think is right. But they are great for simmering and slow-cooking, since they do hold temperature steady for extended periods of time. They also need to be on their own circuit/outlet — not a heavy duty circuit, but nothing else plugged in.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
When my brother who lives in Seattle rebuilt his house in a historic neighborhood (the land is so valuable that people basically rip down the little craftsmen houses and rebuild them as equally cute two and three-story craftsmen houses) he rented a house up the block which had a dream kitchen. They had a Bluestar gas stove that was really easy to use:
https://www.shopbluestar.com
and also designed to be easily taken apart, presumably for cleaning, but that would also work for repairs.
All their stuff is very seriously expensive though, I just checked the website. One induction model no more; it’s clearly not their thing.
JaneE
I don’t have a portable induction cooktop, but have had induction cooktops and a range since 2009. We had to rewire the kitchen to replace a gas range but it was worth it. If you don’t have induction cookware they make adapters – stainless steel disks that work really well with my anodized aluminum cookware. Mine are by Flovia but there are several brands. They go in the dishwasher if you get spatter on them too. And the cast iron older than I am works beautifully.
StringOnAStick
I’m still looking for a canner, preferably a steam canner, that will work on our newish induction range (GE for the win, love it and would never go back to gas). I turned my narrow stock pot into a water bath canner with a “rack” I made of hardware cloth and wood, but I can only do 4 pints. Smells nicely of cedar when I use it though! Maybe my solution is a huge, wide stock pot I have a gorgeous Revere were one of those but it doesn’t work on induction so I guess I should sell it; sentimental attachment is why I haven’t.
TBone
Great reminder about “stuff” but I rankled at how he treats Gwen here (although she is wrong and standing in the way of progress):
https://bsky.app/profile/governorwalz.mn.gov/post/3lehnx2guos2m
I think he should have spoken to her about why she was wrong, and not been so patronizing, but I’m a weirdo that way.
Mark Stevenson
Betty -I have had a Frigidaire “Gallery” countertop induction cooking unit for about 14 years. I use it every morning to make our oatmeal and it does a great job. There are (5) power settings. Setting 4 boils 1.5 cups of water in about 4 min,, after which I turn it down to 3 which perfectly “simmers” the oatmeal, then can leave on 1 to keep warm until consumption.
This precision works well – I would not hesitate to recommend.
Good luck in your shopping and hope you are feeling better!