I'm sorry to hear that Duane, I wish a speedy recovery for you. Two years ago I broke my foot on the very top. It was right at Thanksgiving which is a very important time in the garden here...the weather cools off and we can really get moving and do the heavy work. So I can imagine how you are feeling, this is just not the best timing for you. However, I just did as you know to do - rest it. I had to ignore fall, let things do as they might and very early in the year get back to work as best I could. There are continuing complications because I did not receive the care I needed for the foot, but I don't much worry about that. Every day I can get out there and get busy I really appreciate it! You're lucky you have a wife who is taking it all in stride. My hubby ended up having no time to help between work and getting me back and forth to appointments (nobody believed my foot was actually broken, the bones never moved and it didn't show up in x-rays, however I had all the "Symptoms" of a break or many breaks) - so without being able to have any control over what needed to be done out there, I just gave in and rested. It helped me slow down a bit, and hand a bit back over to the one really in control. GGG

I don't often comment but I just had to comment about this subject. I worked in public safety for almost 20 years. For every violent crime you see reported on the news (gun shot, stabbing, carjacking, armed robbery, home invasion, etc.), there are countless others that aren't reported on TV or in the newspaper. And I'm not just talking about in big cities or the 'bad areas of town'. These days, the number of violent crimes are going up at staggering rates and they are affecting EVERY one and at ANY time of the day or night. When I was growing up, my mom used to comfort us when we were scared by telling us that no one would break in while we were at home. She would say, "Those bad men only want to break in when no one's home. They want to get in, steal all the stuff and get out quickly without being noticed. They usually don't want to hurt anyone." Well, that is just not true anymore. These days, people are just flat out cruel and they would just as soon shoot you as to look at you. They WILL come into your home regardless if you are home or not. In fact, they often look for targets who are home so you can lead them to where all your expensive items are and even take them to other locations to get more. With that in mind, here are a few things you can do to avoid being a victim: 1) ALWAYS BE MINDFUL THAT NO ONE IS FOLLOWING YOU...when you leave the bank, ATM, a nice restaurant, the mall, etc. If you EVER even think you are being followed, drive to the closest police station. DO NOT GO HOME!! 2) ALWAYS LOCK YOUR WINDOWS & DOORS...in your home and automobile. 3) LEAVE ON EXTERIOR LIGHTS AT NIGHT. Motion censored and/or timed lights are a great addition to a few that remain on all night. Mix it up to keep from getting in a routine that someone would notice. 4) GET A DOG (or at least have a sign that indicates you own one) 5) INSTALL AN ALARM SYSTEM with a BATTERY BACK-UP and ALWAYS HAVE IT ARMED and MONITORED, NO MATTER WHAT TIME OF THE DAY IT IS!! The sophisticated home invader knows that many people don’t turn alarms on regularly! So if you have it, always use it! By the way, if you don't have a landline and/or you are in a remote location, use a satellite alarm monitoring company. 6) IF YOU ARE A FEMALE LIVING ALONE, BUY SOME MENS BOOTS from a thrift store and set them outside your door to make it look like there is a man living there with you. You can put them beside your imaginary dog's bowl on the porch! :0) 7) ALWAYS FOLLOW YOUR GUT! That first gut instinct is almost always right. Listen to it! Below is an article about a home invasion that happened close to my home very recently. It was in a very affluent area and ended very badly. A 78 y/o grandmother and her disabled granddaughter returned home from running errands and were surprised by burglars as the men were about to leave the home. From the getaway car, one of the suspects fired a single shot from a handgun, striking the disabled woman in the head, killing her. To read more, the article is here: FAYETTE CO GRANDMOTHER PLEADS to FIND SUSPECTS IN FATAL HOME INVASION I hope this info helps at least one person stay safe. Blessings, ~Addy~ P.S. There's some additional safety info in the link below: Here is a link that might be useful: HOME INVASION ROBBERY - Protect Your Family With A Security Plan

SUCCESS!! A half hour ago I was sitting down to report failure. For the record I'll report what I did. But the punch line is: google the real problem. I was not actually having F11 or F14 codes, I was having Sud and F02 codes and it does make a difference. There's a good thread about Sud/F02 codes here. And the moral is: While writing this I just had to jump up and check on my machine because it was spinning so audibly fast. It hasn't done that in a *loooong* time. Let me tell you why: The Sud/F02 code is apparently due to a blocked outlet. On retrospect, everything points to this simple answer. I didn't add things together before hand. It's been a long time since I've heard water leaving the drum. And it hasn't spun hard in ages either. The symptoms were longer and longer for the machine to finish its cycle until finally it just failed and started throwing codes eventually. And recently water is left in the drum a little bit too (when someone else used it; I manipulated things so that didn't happen). So all this adds up to: plugged drain. The drain is located behind the bottom panel, removed with three hex screws (see link above). There's a 3" plastic plug to remove and in mine was: ripped plastic hose, broken pen parts, many, many of them (I'm going to kill my teenager), and disposable dental floss picks (I'm going to kill dh), and eraser caps (I'm going to kill my tweenager), and a really, really thick plug of grease and hair and compressed lint and other gook that was just its own unique substance. Oh my. As suggested in the link above, do have many, many towels ready to sop up much, much water that will come out. Also in my water is about 2 TB at least of heavy white grains -- maybe that's just sand -- dh is a marine biologist and teen is a jr lifeguard, spending much time on the beach. Would sand that sits in water soften? I guess not -- don't know what that stuff is. It's kind of hydrated. Practically like oats. Ycccck. And so .... the machine seems fixed. And I'm thinking now that hydrated "sand" is maybe the backing to decaying plastic-backed rugs. What did I do prior to finding the fix? I took the circuit board out again as described by so many above with such luck. I didn't note very much before and want to set it down here for the record. I encountered many, many broken plastic clips, some sitting on the wires, some in the circuit board itself. The whole white plastic housing rattled on its clips even though those three large ones weren't visibly broken. When I replaced it I fixed that back on with duck tape too. Pry the three large white tabs holding the white housing box for the circuit board up with a thin screwdriver, a little bit on one side, then the other, back to the first side. Two people might help but would need to be very light-fingered. There are plastic clips holding the circuit board to the white box. Most of mine are broken (the machine is 10 years old now). Two thin screwdrivers are needed to pry the tabback and then with the other screwdriver, gently press the board up. This must happen back and forth at a couple spots (without touching any solders obviously). The backs of all my solders looked perfect. Two of the tops of my solders looked a little dark in color. Neither of the switches looked corroded. I resoldered all the contact strips. Some looked fine but when I went to remelt the solder, I discovered there just wasn't any there at all, so I added a touch more. I sprayed all the contact strips with electronic cleaner before soldering ; don't know if that was a mistake. Almost all the clips that hold the wiring housings in place are snapped off just from time and the vibration of the machine itself. It's possible a new board housing is in order. I think that's all I wanted to remember for next time. I had some vaseline ready but decided it wasn't necessary. Given how tough it was to slip on the cracky plastic wire housings, I'm thinking that might help the clips go on more smoothly on old machines. OTOH with no exterior plastic clips left to hold the wire harnesses in place, making that too smooth a contact might allow it to wriggle free easier. After I fit it all back in place I was relieved that the machine turned on just fine, only with the same characteristic noisy sound and non-rotation of the drum - another symptom that I forgot to mention (signifying, as it turns out, that plugged drain). Immediately after starting up again the Sud code got thrown again so that's when (duh) I started to google the other codes. This thread is a wonderful repository! In sum: Sud/F02 == plugged drain, remove bottom panel and clean trap F11/F14/door lock == bad circuit contacts, resolder, clean contacts, etc. Here is a link that might be useful: Sud/F02 code fix

I think I have a bad cold, not the flu. I need to kill my husband but love him too much to kill him. We have to put our fire radios on a charger every night to recharge the batteries. Apparently he did not set his radio on the charger, so it started beeping very loudly at 4 a.m. to let us know the battery was almost dead. It was like having a fire alarm going off in the house. Can anyone say "Wide awake?" We had another big fire today, but had spent the morning buying supplies---prepackaged snacks, gas cans, bungee cords, gloves, zipties (no, I don't know why---but the firefighters said they needed them, so we bought them), etc. and cleaning up/reorganizing all the trucks and tweaking minor mechanical issues and such, so we were ready. We had already done all the basics last night, like gassing up all the trucks and refilling all the water tanks. Today was spent fine-tuning everything else and cleaning up the trucks because they were dirty and sooty from last night. We also picked up about another dozen cases of bottled water and Gatorade. We were trying to be ready for anything that might happen. Two big multi-alarm fires in two days concerns me. Today was supposed to be a "low" fire danger day, but eventually our Fire Danger status for our county was showing "High" fire danger, so I guess our weather overachieved. The forecast high was 70 and we hit 77, which I think is a bad sign. By then, we had six VFDs, including ours, out at a combination vehicle fire (a Winnebago with a full 50-gallon tank of gas) and grass fire/wildfire (because a burning vehicle is going to ignite the grass beside it). So, for the second day in a row, our attempt to lay floor tile in the mudroom fizzled out. Maybe tomorrow will be our day. Or, maybe we'll finally get it done sometime in 2018. I feel out of sorts, Jennifer, and have for months. I blame the weather. I feel like, at least lately, we have all four seasons of weather every day. You wake up in the morning and it is cold, so you dress for Winter in sweats, a coat, boots and gloves and go out into 30 or 40 degree weather to take care of the animals. By mid-morning, it has warmed up a lot and you shed the heavier clothing because it feels like Spring. You start thinking it might turn out to be a really nice day after all now that it is no longer cold. Somehow, then, in the early afternoon the house is starting to feel hot, so you decide it is Summertime and turn on the air conditioner. Summertime isn't too bad, as long as you watch out for snakes hiding in the leaves when you're out in the yard with the animals but at the same time, you know that it isn't right to have 75 or 80 or 85 degree weather in November. Then, as soon as the sun starts to set, the temperatures fall rapidly, you turn off the air conditioner and a couple of hours later, make sure to turn on the heater before you go to bed because, now it is Winter again. Stack a bunch of these days on top of one another and it is enough to make anyone feel out of sorts. And...there's dust, pollen (weed and tree pollen here still is at moderate levels) and smoke in the air, so you really don't even want to be outside during the prettiest part of the day, especially if you're coughing your head off. I just want some normal weather. I want it to be cold when it should and hot when it should, and getting rain would be lovely, but I'm starting to think it isn't going to rain ever again. Or, at least it isn't going to rain again in 2017. Other than the above, everything is just peachy keen here. Rebecca, I like JetStar as well as all the other hybrids you mentioned. They all perform really well for me here. In our garden, Jet Star is more productive, but Big Beef has better flavor, so I tend to just grow them both. I think Big Beef is the best-flavored red hybrid available today, and Brandy Boy is the best combination of hybrid vigor, flavor and productivity available in a pink tomato. Amy, Yes, movies were expensive and herding a bunch of kids was a chore, but those still were sweet times, and I cherish the memories. I think the kids had as much fun seeing second-run movies at the $1 theater as they had seeing first-run movies at the bigger, more expensive places. I don't miss those days though---they were great at the time and now they're over. (grin) Now it is those children who are the adults taking their kids to the movies and they can do it without me and I'm not offended at all. I really enjoyed going to movies as a kid in the 1960s and 1970s. We had a little local theater that was open through at least the late 1960s (with a drugstore right beside it that had a lunch counter, stools and a soda fountain) and we went to a local drive-in a lot in the 1970s. I do love Gary 'O Sena. In fact, I like all of Keith Mueller's varieties, though Liz Birt is a more tart flavor so it appeals more to people who like old-fashioned flavor than to those who like the sweeter types of tomatoes. It is conversations like these that make my tomato grow list spontaneously expand and get too long. Nancy, I think it is an age thing. When I'm with my brothers and sisters, I don't want for the gathering to end. Perhaps it is partly because we're at the age now where we've buried at least some of our parents and their siblings and spouses, our grandparents are long gone, and we've lost a cousin here or there far too young, and we're becoming more and more aware of how quickly the time flies by. You look back and wonder where the decades went. It seems like just yesterday we siblings and cousins were the kids, and now a lot of us are the grandparents. How did that happen? Tomorrow we start the last week of November. Where did the month go? Dawn