I'm with Slub on this one, down below is a link to our new convention center, I think yesterday the public had a chance to tour the interior for the first time. Our Woolworths use to sit on this corner. Pretty well the whole block was demolished to build this convention center, a lot of heated discussion over the whole thing, a lot of people were against it. IMO this is a beautiful building which fits in with the surrounding architecture. If you could have seen the derelict old buildings they tore down, well, I won't say what it looked like. Annette Here is a link that might be useful: Our new convention center

Tell us a story!

I took my blog short stories and published them on Kindle Unlimited! Amazon expanded the 'read inside' section so the first three stories are now available for free. Please read them and let your friends know...if you like them. My next set of short stories will be about my mother's great-grandparents. They were both deaf, but decided to leave their families (and the money) and homestead in the Dakota Territory. While I may go back and turn these short stories into a longer book, I like the idea of getting something down on family history while I can. And short stories are something I can write as I have the time, even with everything else we have going on right now. If anyone has questions about self-publishing on Amazon...there are some great YouTube videos that really helped me!

Fridge shoppers have my sympathy. It is not just Kitchenaid SxS models getting "awful" reviews these days, but it does seem to be the currently least reliable line of SxS models. A few of years back, LG was the worst, with a one in four failure rate. Then, as LG got a bit better, Electrolux/Frigidaire started showing 40% defect rate (over one-in three.). The Yale Appliance blog reported that they were seeing even higher service rates for Elux and the "Pro" line of Frigidaires. Now, according to the latest membership survey results published by Consumer Reports , Frigidaire/Elux is the "best" with "only" a 32% failure rate (a "mere" one in three!) while KA is showing a 40% rate for SxS models and everybody else in between. There may not be much comfort in those figures for any brand, however, because the fine print on the survey report says that rate differences of less than 8 points are not statistically significant. The fine print also says the survey is not counting fridges with "service contracts" apparently meaning that they are not counting he responses from people who had defects covered by extended warranties. It is just as bad with French door models except that all Whirlpool brands are showing defect rates over forty percent (some even reaching one out of two!). With plain bottom freezer fridges, the only difference is that LG is now the reliability leader with a one in four failure rate and everybody else with one-in-three rates except for Whirlpool whose brands are showing a one-in-two defect rate. Apparently, ice-maker problems are the thing that makes the Whirlpool brands worse than others. CR is recommending against any kind of Whirlpool-branded fridge with an ice maker It was a much different story when I, Rob30 and Anglophilia bought our KA fridges five and six years ago. Back then, LG was showing the same one-in-four failure rates for its fridges (as was GE, btw), but the Whirlpool brands' rates were down around one-in-ten for BF/FD models and slightly higher for the SxS models. You still saw a lot of awful reviews but that was mostly attributable to Whirlpool's large market share. With that market share, ten or fifteen percent of Whirlpool buyers was still a very large number of folks who could and did write complaints and reviews. Nonetheless, those rates meant that 80% to 90% of us KA/WP owners did not have problems with our fridges. Seems to be a very different story today. Dunno about the "boutique" brands of premium priced fridges as they apparently do not sell enough of them to CR members to generate a statistically large enough response to show up in the survey reports. Have not found anything else that reliably indicates problems rates and longevity. As Landsdowne points out, Bosch fridges in the North American market are made by Whirlpool. Presumably, those would have comparable problems rates. As would Dacor fridges which, I believe, were contracted from Whirlpool. (Now, with Samsung acquiring Dacor, that will likely change, as you might imagine.) Viking fridges have long had a terrible reputation in this forum. (Made in-house in a former Amana plant acquired from Whirlpool, IIRC.) Miele and Liebherr seem to have something of a following here, but I don't think they make SxS fridges. Neither does Fisher & Paykel/DCS which also has had some favorable reviews. If you are going to consider FD or BF models, none of these brands seem to have a lot of user reviews and manufacturer warranty service can be geographically spotty. FWIW, I have often opened and closed my KA's freeezer drawer from the side and have never had a problem torquing the drawer. That's not much consolation given the other problems with the make's current products. Looks like a bad time to be shopping for a new fridge.