Aha! So that’s why comments were borked. If you import another CMS’ content into WordPress, you may be left with a user with a blank name. When this happens, comments will be broken for anyone not already logged in.

You’re told to delete this phantom user, but if you do that all the posts it made will also be deleted. The better solution if you ask me is to simply edit the blank user so he or she has a name.

We bought a dishwasher the other week. I don’t like spending money on non-fun things (like the PSP I bought.. more on that later), but I never have time / energy to do the dishes everyday, so I’d skip days and have to spend an hour in front of the sink. However, I don’t have the electrician or plumber chops to install a dishwasher. Amy came up with the perfect solution - portable dishwasher. When you need to use it, you wheel it up to the sink, connect the hose, turn on the hot water, and plug it in.

A trip to Sears later, and we have our new Whirlpool machine. It’s new and shiny and cool and stuff.

I set it up and did a test cycle, but when it’s finished there’s about an inch of water in the bottom. Hmm. Amy theorizes it didn’t complete a cycle properly because there was nothing in there to wash, so we load it up and wash. Clean dishes, but an inch of leftover water, soapy and greasy. This is obviously not draining properly.

My first thought is that it’s our low water pressure, but I Google around. One anecdote mentioned that they called Whirlpool and was told that some water left in the bottom is normal, and in fact necessary to keep the pump from drying out. So I don’t panic, and continue washing dishes. But I notice that now there’s no water draining out at all (I stopped up the sink and watched closely while the dishwasher ran - sink was still bone dry at the end), which is clearly not the correct behaviour. Also, the now two inches of water in the bottom have caused the safety float thingy to trip, so I’m sure the dishes aren’t even getting washed properly. I did the only thing I could do - siphon out the water with a rubber hose. I did this for a few nights, ending my day with a moutful of soapy, greasy dishwater. Sometimes I’d get lucky and get chunks of food. Mmm, snackalicious.

I got tired of that pretty quickly, and some more Googling turned up one glimmer of hope. It was some guy’s blog, evidently a repairman of some kind, who would write an entry every day about the things he had to fix. One entry mentioned a Whirlpool dishwasher that wouldn’t drain, and how he found the drain hose kinked up behind the dishwasher.

So I went and lifted up the dishwasher with Amy’s help, and sure enough, the hose was trapped between the outer panel and the uh.. inner panel? and it was kinked up. I shoved it free, massaged out the kink, and ran a test cycle. My fingers didn’t need to be crossed though, because almost immediately it flushed out some nasty backed-up water. Since then it’s been fine - no water is left in the dishwasher at all, and the dishes are looking cleaner and with fewer spots.

Wow, this sure was a long post, considering it could be condensed to “Our dishwasher didn’t drain. The hose was kinked. Now it works.”

Wow, I’ve been so terrible. Barely got the site up and running again before just ignoring it for a month.

I think I have an excuse though don’t I, with the new baby and everything? Oh, that’s right. Baby X hasn’t deigned to grace us with its presence yet. Every time the Schwan’s guy comes, we say to ourselves “Well, that’s the last time we’ll see him without the new baby”. We’ve said that 3 times now, and he only comes every fortnight.

I’m terrified, of course. I’m certainly excited, but that whole childbirth thing doesn’t sit well with me.

Alright, onto the flood of posts while I have a few spare moments!