washing machine failure

This is a picture of the motor control unit of my washing machine showing burn marks

This is a closeup of a part with the top exploded off

This is a copy of the case for my motor control unit showing burn marks.

This washing machine is a Whirlpool model wfw9150ww00.  It is two years old and therefore out of warranty.

This part cost approximately $220 with the tax.  With the service added, the repair was about twice the cost of a new washer.

The repair person said that this type of damage could be caused by a voltage surge.  

I got a surge protector for my washing machine.  Before that I had never realized that washing machines needed surge protectors.

My previous washing machine lasted over 20 years, with only one or two repairs, none of which was this expensive.

I believe that something needs to be done about protecting consumers from this type of crap.  Obviously a one year warranty with planned obsolescence is completely inadequate.  Moreover, Con Ed should be responsible if their voltage surge caused this problem, yet they claim no responsibility for damage to appliances.

The quality of products being distributed in this country is clearly in a downward trend. I know I am not unique in being victimized by shoddy construction and poor customer service.

The government is asleep at the switch here, while everyone is getting ripped off.

warranty and lack of product markings

Here is a photo of my garden clippers that fell apart in my hands when I was pruning.

Now you will note that these clippers have no brand name on them.  I checked the other side as well.  It also has no brand name, no phone number, no information at all indicating where this clipper might have been made.

OK, so I went and bought some new clippers.

Looks pretty similar to my old clippers, but, again, nowhere on the actual clippers is there any brand name, website, phone number, or anything that might allow me to trace where the clippers might have been made.

The packaging does have such information, as shown here

You will note that this packaging indicates a lifetime warranty.  Obviously, tho, if this new pair of clippers were to break next year I would most likely no longer have the packaging, nor would I remember where I got the clippers or be able to find a receipt.  Therefore the lifetime warranty is inherently useless.

While this clipper looks very similar to the one that broke, I have no way of proving that the manufacturer is in fact the same.

I would submit that this type of packaging/marking is essentially fraudulent, inducing people to purchase substandard goods, based on the promise of a lifetime warranty, without any real possibility of claiming the warranty.

I would further submit that this type of packaging should be illegal where the product itself has no indication of where to claim the warranty.  

Laws to protect consumers should require that this type of warranty be enforceable without the packaging or receipt.

Taking risks

I got an e-mail from a head hunter looking for a patent attorney, yesterday.  I've been looking for a job as a patent attorney for a long time.  This job looked like a fit, though it would have meant moving to Virginia. A few years ago I would have applied for it.

This time I did not.  I have developed this dream that I am going to become a content creator, that I am going to write novels and comedy, act, improvise, do standup, sing, and do calligraphy.

So far, I have never made money doing any of these things.  My father, who paid for law school, would not have approved.   He liked my being a patent attorney.  It was one of those small satisfactions that I had in my relationship with him that he approved of my academic performance and my career choice.  Otherwise he was a pretty dour, distant, critical person, who was difficult to relate to.

Perhaps I would not have had the courage to say no to this headhunter if I had not had a improv workshop with David Razowsky [ http://www.davidrazowsky.com/improvisacting/Welcome.html ] this week and if he had not said right into my face that he had been doing this for 35 years and I was a strong improvisor.   He told me to celebrate that.

I sort of froze, like a deer in the headlights.  I wasn't expecting such a comment.  He had been yelling at me before.  I should have thanked him, but I was stunned.

So I said no to the head hunter, not that I would necessarily have gotten the job anyway.  I've been failing to get jobs I applied for for a long time now. Still, I wonder if I have become a bit like Jack from "Jack and the Beanstalk" who traded a cow for a handful of magic beans.  Jack was exceptionally lucky that the beans turned out to be truly magic.  By all rights they shouldn't have been.  

Let's hope that  I have at least a fraction of Jack's luck.

Aaron Swarz

This Aaron Swarz thing is really eating at me.

This was a youthful, non-violent, first offender committing an act of civil disobedience, for no personal gain, out of idealism.  He committed suicide when an overzealous federal prosecutor would not plea bargain down from seeking a sentence of 50 years -- and he was isolated from the activist community, which had been supporting him in his proposed activities.

Granted, the value of the copyrighted material he proposed to publish was large, but similar white collar crimes in others, others who profited from their actions, resulted in much lesser sentences.

The Enron people got 25 years or so, and one of them may get out with 14

http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/enron_sentencing/

Raj Rajaratnam, who did super huge scale insider trading, got 11 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Rajaratnam

We need to have better control and standardization rather than unbridled prosecutorial discretion.

Anyway, if you, like me, are bothered by the Aaron Swarz prosecution, there is a petition going around.

http://act.demandprogress.org/act/thanks_sen/?referring_akid=a8778509.669022.11IWU1&source=auto-e

Also, Aaron reminds me of my own son, who is a Stallmanite.

linkedin bounced my essay about WCC (too long), so I'm putting it here

OK, so I suffer from diarrhea of the fingers.

This would not fit in the description of what I was doing at WCC


I started out thinking I wanted to retrain in biology.  I took two semesters of biology.  My next move was supposed to be to take Anatomy and Physiology.  I decided that I could not waste a single additional precious brain cell on memorizing body parts, which struck me as the most deadly boring possible activity.  My favorite part of biology was cellular respiration, which was the most similar to the work I had already been doing in patent law.

Then I went to chemistry, which was an improvement over biology, but the course was fairly rinky dink and the part I liked best was the part that dealt with the physics that was most close to my father; which brought me back to why I studied physics in the first place: my father was a famous physicist.

So I switched over to 2 semesters of electrical engineering.  Immediately, I felt much more at home.  These were the kind of people I went to college with and the kind of topics I loved studying.

I concluded that I had not made a mistake in college by studying physics, computers, and electrical engineering.  This was really the area I loved and love, much better than biology and chemistry.  That was a relief, knowing that I did not make a mistake back then.  I think one of the things that dominates your thinking, when you're in your fifties, was "Did I make a mistake in my earlier choices?"  NO. I didn't.  Physics was the right major.  Thank you, God.

Anyway, then, on a lark, I auditioned for X-factor in May of 2012.  I went to Providence Rhode Island.  There were 7,000 people there.  I got through two rounds of auditions, which meant there were only a few hundred people left.  That was May 11, 2012.  

The third round was a video tape that was sent to Los Angeles for review by the show's producers.  I was told that if I was going to get on TV, in front of the celebrity judges, I would hear back by June 27.

That time period coincided perfectly with the first summer term of Westchester Community College.  I dropped everything and took acting and voice for five weeks as a full time student.

I didn't get called back.

But the idea was planted.  I like performing.  I don't like sitting in front of stacks of paper reading technical information with no contact with people and no opportunity to actually see any physical products.

Sexism in IP law

On April 26, 2013, I attended an event called the "Fashion Law Institute."  This even was timed to coincide with world IP day, and was co-sponsored by NYIPLA and AIPLA at Fordham Law School.  I don't normally do fashion law, but I went, because it sounded interesting.

Speakers included attorneys, a law professor, and fashion designers, and was situated in a delightful atrium, with a free bar and finger food.  If you did not want CLE credit, you did not have to pay anything.  Such a deal!

I had somehow thought that the copyright law had been reformed so that fashion designs could now be copyrighted.  I was mistaken.  They still can't be.  

There was a heart wrenching story there of an independent fashion designer who designed what was clearly an innovative and never before seen collar on a dress, posted it on Facebook, and had it ripped off by big name labels immediately.

Another speaker, an attorney, spoke of being able to protect copyright in photos of dresses & therefore sue those producing knock-offs based on their photos of their products -- when the dresses themselves were not protectable.

Another speaker had gotten a utility patent on a novel structure for a girdle and had gotten a multi-million dollar settlement against an infringer.

On the whole, though, the feeling was a bit dismal that designers could not protect their original designs.  Design patents would take too long, given that a design was probably only useful for a single season.

Moreover, designers were depressed that they would graduate from top notch schools and find that their new employers were not interested in their designs, but only in knocking off the designs of others.

As I was listening to this, I remembered my days back at Kenyon and Kenyon, doing litigation support for the great cookie litigation.   This was a litigation between Proctor and Gamble as patentee, and Nabisco, Keebler and Frito-Lay as defendants.   It concerned a patent on cookies.

It was hornbook law that recipes for the preparation of food could not be patented.  The patentees there got around that, by using a smoke screen of elaborate machines to measure texture of the cookies and elaborate calculations on measurements taken by the machines, so that the Examiner reading the patent did not suspect that it was actually a recipe.  It looked so very high tech.

So sitting there, looking at all these clothing designers, who were primarily women -- and thinking of those who create recipes, most of whom are likely also women -- I had an abrupt realization that there is something fundamentally sexist about the intellectual property law of this country.  Creative people in traditionally female fields are denied protection for their inventions.  

This seems to be a way of disenfranchising women and denying us access to the benefits of Intellectual Property --- another way that men rig the system to keep women in poverty: barefoot, pregnant behind the plough.

Interestingly, we were informed that other countries do not have the same law as we do.  Fashion designs are protectable in many other countries, such as the European Union and China.  

Here we are running about telling the world that IP is *so* important.  Yet, in this area, which nevertheless represents a substantial industry, we are the rogues, allowing designs to be stolen freely.

Why?

This seems like supreme hypocrisy on our part.

And, as I said before, profoundly sexist.

We learned that there is copyright legislation being considered that would allow fashion designs to be the subject of copyright in the USA.

I hope the readers, if there are any such, will contact their Congress Critters -- as my ex husband used to call them -- in support of such legislation.

Health Savings Accounts

For people who have health insurance plans with a high deductible, the tax code and/or regulations provide the possibility of a Health Savings Account (HSA), to which one can make tax deductible contributions for the purpose of covering health expenses not covered by insurance.

The problem here is that the contribution limit for an HSA is 3250, while the deductible for my insurance from the New York State Bar Association is $5000.

The contribution limit should be the same as my deductible.