Important Stuff

I bought an Olevia 527 TV. It crapped out. They told me they would send a refurb, if I paid the freight and gave them a credit card number. I was to put the old tube in the refurb box and send it back. It took over a month to get the replacement. I was mad, but at least it was fixed, right?

Well, this week I noticed that the new one hums all the time, even when it's not connected to other electronics, and even when I run an extension cord to a socket on another circuit. And then tonight the damn thing died.

Called Olevia. They're sending a third TV.

I'm not too impressed with the practice of shipping refurbs to replace new TVs. For one thing, you have no idea how old the refurb is or how many hours are on it. For another, it's a TV that has already crapped out at least once. So isn't it natural to expect it to crap out again?

My first Olevia is great, but after the problems I've had with the second one, I would never buy Olevia again. It's worth another hundred bucks to get a brand with good support. They just don't seem to have the kind of in-country investment they need to do an adequate job.

If my first Olevia dies, I am going to kill myself. Pure and simple. It's off warranty, and it's heavy, and I really don't feel like driving 37" TVs back and forth from the UPS Store, when all the shipping and repair expenses are my responsibility.

In other news, I finally got around to checking the fuse in the old Zenith I replaced with the second Olevia. Sure enough, it was blown. I replaced it, and now my trusty Zenith is working as well as ever. What a great TV that is. It's over 12 years old, and the picture seems as good as it ever was. I think I may build a TV platform on the wall in the garage, so when the garage is totally rehabbed I can sit under the ceiling fan and watch hot rod shows. If only I had room for a secondhand vinyl office couch. I have an extra stereo I want to put out there.

I should have checked the fuse before buying a new TV, but I have to admit, I wanted a flat panel, so I wasn't motivated to try.

Let's see. What else is happening? Oh, yeah. I tried two new peppers today. First, the Jamaican red Scotch bonnet. This is a saucer-shaped pepper which is supposed to be red, but mine are orange. It doesn't look like a totally normal chinense pepper. Supposedly there are peppers that are part chinense and part annuum or frutescens. It's not bad, but it's not worth the effort of growing. Not sweet, not particularly flavorful.

Second pepper: the yellow habanero. This is a very pretty bright yellow chinense. Medium-sized. Smaller than a hot chocolate. I ate a piece this afternoon, and it was very, very good. Very sweet, full of flavor, and hot as Satan's sphincter after a chili-eating contest. I like this one a lot. So I may kill my Caribbean reds and replace them with these. It's like they mysterious huge "habanero gold" peppers I found at a local store, only much smaller and not red. I'm growing those too, but it will be maybe two months before I get to try one.

I highly recommend the yellow habanero. It's right up there with the hot chocolate and the Tobago seasoning pepper in terms of flavor and usefulness. Not too prolific, though.

Oh, I forgot. I tried one of my prig ki nus the other day. They're really good, and the flavor is much different from the chinenses I grow. It has a ton of Thai personality; if you eat real Thai food, you'll recognize it. It's a keeper, although I'm afraid the bigger of my two plants is about to die from bug attacks. I was surprised at the heat in this pepper. It's supposed to be much milder than the other peppers I grow, but it damn near killed me. Recommended, but you need to remember that it has a different personality from habaneros and Scotch bonnets, so you can't expect it to be the same when you throw it in chili or jerk.