{"id":386,"date":"2017-06-29T18:26:07","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T18:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/?p=386"},"modified":"2017-06-29T18:29:59","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T18:29:59","slug":"toaster-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/?p=386","title":{"rendered":"Toaster love"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, I decided an overt expression of love for my wife of 32 years was in order.\u00a0 For months she’d been complaining about our $20 Costco toaster.\u00a0 Some of the elements were out; I’d had to repair the electromagnet that holds the toast down a couple of times, and my repairs are slapdash at best; the “eject” button had gotten smooshed in a fit of rage at some point.<\/p>\n

I decided the thing to do to best express my undying love was to find the best <\/em>toaster and buy it as an unexpected present to replace the accursed, damaged mechanical dud we’d put up with for all that time.\u00a0 Of course, the best<\/em> toaster would come from the best<\/em> kitchen store, Williams-Sonoma, and be outrageously<\/em> expensive for a toaster.\u00a0 So, a little online research in the parking lot, a quick inspection of the display model in the store to confirm how gorgeous it looked, and I plonked down the more-than-3-figures amount and walked out with the Breville 2-Slice Diecast Smart Toaster.\u00a0 I wanted high-tech, beautiful and indestructible, so I bought Canadian.\u00a0 An aside: retail is hurting so much right now that Williams-Sonoma had a 20% just-for-the-hell-of-it sale; way less expensive than Amazon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This toaster has a motor; you don’t push anything, you indicate you want the bread raised or lowered using the 5-button control panel.\u00a0 The panel includes a button labelled “A Bit More\u00ae”, so if you pop your toast up and decide you need, well, a bit more, there’s a button for that.\u00a0 There’s a button for doing Bagels, and a button for doing Frozen breads to “activate additional toasting time”.\u00a0 There’s a “Lift and Look\u00ae” button so you can check the status of the toast “without interrupting the toasting cycle” and to adjust the volume of the toast-ready alert.\u00a0 It’s built of die-cast aluminum, not cheap plastic.\u00a0 It has many, many levels of toastiness, selectable by an LED-illuminated analog slider.<\/p>\n

This morning, I inserted two pieces of bread in the machine and selected the “Toast\/Cancel” button, and felt a little flutter in my stomach as I watched the bread slide down into the toaster’s inards, as I have most days for the last two weeks.\u00a0 The LEDs gradually moved to the position indicating things were done.\u00a0 Then, the toaster issued a periodic click, but refused to raise the toast.\u00a0 After tapping the “Toast\/Cancel” and “Lift and Look\u00ae” buttons a few times, I turned the unit upside down to retrieve the toast and set it back on the counter.\u00a0 It continued to click at me, and finally all the illuminated buttons started flashing.<\/p>\n

I unplugged the toaster and plugged it back in (too many years of working with Windows-based computers).\u00a0 More clicking; more flashing.\u00a0 Images of flaming toasters spontaneously pushing their way into my consciousness.<\/p>\n

Some research on the web led to finding someone else who had the same experience.\u00a0 They determined that a crumb somewhere was disabling the mechanism, and took care of the problem by dropping the front of the toaster precisely two inches to the counter.\u00a0 I disconnected the toaster, dropped it, reconnected it and voil\u00e1, the motor smoothly returned the toast “carriage” to its off position.<\/p>\n

Canadian firmware at it’s finest.\u00a0 A potential hazard is detected (“there’s a crumb in the mechanism!\u00a0 It may not be safe to engage the motor!”) and disaster averted.\u00a0 And the fix is: drop the unit from a modest, Canadian-sized height.<\/p>\n

My wife now finds me even more adorable than I was.\u00a0 Able to hear and act on her mild expressions of discontent without requiring specific instruction.\u00a0 Willing to spend ridiculous amounts to lavish upon her the pinnacle of modern kitchen engineering to ensure her morning toast is just the right brown-ness, and with the manly nonce to deal swiftly and decisively with the complexities that engineering injects into our life.\u00a0 I can’t wait to install the smart front door lock\u00ae.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, I decided an overt expression of love for my wife of 32 years was in order.\u00a0 For months she’d been complaining about our $20 Costco toaster.\u00a0 Some of the elements were out; I’d had to repair the electromagnet that holds the toast down a couple of times, and my repairs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":394,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}