Ness' Outpost

Reddit is fighting back (bad words are used by some people in this community – be warned) against the telemarketers that call your house – usually at dinner – and tell you that “this is the second warning that your autos warranty is about to expire”. Where you promptly sigh and then hang up the phone.

The online community at reddit has discovered and published their phone numbers, addresses and instructions on how to fill their phone mailboxes with messages. All this because they are annoyed.

There is definitely a higher percentage of technically able people on reddit that can do all this and more with automation and by using toll free numbers of the business they are driving up the costs.

The telemarketers can change their number, maybe even their address – and they probably will. But they have to have an incoming phone number, their job is to work over the phone selling extended warranties on vehicles (which may or may not be actually backed). So it is easy to predict that will be discovered and this will all repeat itself eventually.

Mob justice isn’t really the answer, but it’s nice to see a company get a taste of its own medicine now and then.

I took our Ariens mower out of the shed last week to give her some love. We inherited the mower from Laurens Dad when we bought the house. It had sat in his garage for at least 3 years as their backup mower.

I took the blade off, sharpened it, cleaned the spark plug and air filter and put them back in. Then after a lot of pulls on the recoil starter it finally sprung to life with a sputter and didn’t sound right at all. After a few minutes it cut out for some unknown reason. I of course didn’t do the proper maintenance to put the mower to bed for the winter so I was hoping this wouldn’t happen.

Every time I tried to mow the back lawn when I got to the corner and turned the mower it sputtered and died. If I tilted the mower forward a bit it sometimes saved the stall and ran but that is no way to mow a lawn. I figured it was bad gas from sitting all winter but I had topped up the tank with fresh gas so who knew. At this point I had the oil hot enough to do an oil change so I did that too but I knew it wouldn’t help the problem. Oil won’t make the mower stall unless it’s way too full which the machine wasn’t.

Some internet reading suggested I clean and inspect the carburetor (where gas and air mix before being combusted) and possibly rebuild it. I didn’t even know where the carburetor was so I had to download a bunch of manuals. I started with the Ariens manual for my mower serial number 911014. But mowers can have multiple engines installed on them so I had to go get the engine serial number to look that manual up too. It was a Tecumseh TVS120.
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