View from the Roof

My Microwave is Dead. Long Live My Microwave.

I placed my cup of tea in my microwave oven and hit the 'time to cook' button. Nothing happened. No beeps. Nothing. So, I figured maybe it needs a re-boot. Unplugged it, waited, plugged it back in, nothing. Can't even set the time.

Now I wasn't exactly heart broken that a three year old $49 microwave had bought the farm, I never was very fond of the thing to begin with. It was really too small anyway. The reason it was too small was because when I bought it I needed a small one to fit the space.

When I moved back to Buffalo I took an apartment in the upper of what was once a single family home. Space was limited, especially in the kitchen. The only logical place for a microwave was on the counter under the cabinets. Which meant I was going to need a small microwave, something like two cubic inches or so. I actually had to develop a unique form of origami to get a bag of popcorn to pop correctly. If I didn't carefully fold the corners of the bag it couldn't rotate properly on the turntable and therefore would cook unevenly.

I was actually thinking of replacing the damn thing anyway. I also was planning on ripping out the timer circuits. Microwave timers are really quite useful to an electronics tinkerer. Wouldn't that be the one circuit that decided to die. The only one I was planning on salvaging? But it actually isn't dead. After a more thorough examination I have determined the '30 second' button still functions.

I can load the oven and press the '30 second' button and it will cook for 30 seconds on high power. Or I can repeatedly press the button and the cook time will increase for 30 seconds. So if need three minutes I press the button six times. But I miss the full programmability of the timer. I would routinely take advantage of the ability of all microwave oven timers to allow a chaining of cook sequences.

Some people don't realize you can push 'time to cook' 3:00 minutes, power level 10, 'time to cook' 2:00 minutes, wait, 'time to cook' 4:00 minutes, power level 5, etc... Which is one of the reasons those timers are so useful to electronics hobbyists. But mine is broken.

But, the damn thing still cooks, and being the chea^H^H^H^H frugal man that I am, I'm finding it hard to replace a working (somewhat) microwave. Even though I was planning on replacing it anyway. Now that I think about it I don't really use it that often anyway.

Maybe I'll buy a new, bigger, microwave next month, or the month after, or......

Well, I gotta go. My tea is ready.

posted by Chris @ 2:00 PM