Give Me Warranties or Give Me Death

It happened. The latent "old man" genes have become active. Very soon I will be wearing open-toe sandals with socks up to my knees and my testicles will hang about six inches lower. That's in the near future, though. The subject of this post is my newfound obsession with warranties and product reliability.

The gene activation was triggered by an environmental stressor, as I assume is common. I was standing in my kitchen with my wife. I had just put the electric tea kettle on (A Capresso kettle that you should never buy). We were talking, when suddenly, a blinding blue light beamed from the corner of our kitchen accompanied by a 200db "BVVVVVTT!" sound. This lasted about 2 seconds before throwing the circuit breaker and filling the kitchen with the smell of burnt plastic.

Our precious kettle was dead, and in its death throws, it attempted to take us out with it.

I've had things break in the past. I don't know what caused me to turn 65 this time. Perhaps it was because, along with this kettle, my expensive Breville kitchen products had all likewise died or were in the process of dying. My $400 "smart" oven is only five years old yet has buttons that don't work. The toaster stopped working after three. Every single one of these products had a one-year warranty, as did the kettle.

The gene effects were solidified when I went online researching warranties and found that one-year warranties seem to be the rule. Three-year warranties are rare. Five-year is basically like finding a unicorn. I was fully and completely an angry old man. I figured I would be sad when this finally happened, but I was instead filled with righteous fury.

If you are curious, I have dedicated myself to Cuisinart, Calphalon, and All-Clad for all future purchases in the kitchen.

I absolutely refuse to buy anything where the manufacturer will not back their work. My family had a toaster over that was purchased in the nineteen-seventies, and we didn't have it shuffle off its mortal coil until 2009. And yet, in this era of commoditized products, warranties were one of the first casualties. Even expensive products like Breville have no warranties. Cars start falling apart at seventy-five thousand miles.

No. No. Absolutely not. This is my rebellion against commoditization. This is my rebellion against products that I'm expected to replace every three years. I want a Ford Mustang, but I will never buy one. I will buy a Toyota. Is it boring? Yes. But I refuse to let companies run by morons sacrifice quality and reliability because they want to grind out new designs. The Boeing 737 MAX? That was driven by idiot managers wanting to grind out something new without the necessary checks. They literally murdered people to get product out the door. If our tea kettle had managed to assassinate us as was its plan, Capresso would likewise have blood on its hands.

We as consumers let this happen. We bought cheaper and cheaper crap and never held companies accountable for their shoddy workmanship and warranties. Apple is a trillion-dollar company with products that are famously pretty but famously crap. Apple even convinced us to spend more on the warranty service that the product should have come with by default! How stupid are we?!

Again, no. Again, I refuse. It's hard, I admit. For example, there seems to be no laptop manufacturers that offer more than a one-year warranty. If you want something higher, you have to pay. This is the company gambling with you and their product. This is a rip-off. A scam. But there is seemingly no recourse. As such, I must pick my fights.

Thankfully, for large purchases, they are easy fights. Appliances, kitchen, cars, yard equipment, all of them have examples with warranties sometimes as long as a decade. That is quality. That is commitment. I value that more than innovative design, even if most people don't.

Finding Purpose

I am trying to get back into photography. It was such a passion for me for so long. I would go out during the golden hour--I especially loved dusk--to photograph flowers and foliage. If I had been in possession of the funds, I would have spent perhaps tens of thousands on gear.

Life intrudes, as it often does. Financial failure, family pressure, deaths and sickness. It stripped my pleasure from me. I am now pathologically incapable of focusing on something that does not enhance my personal brand or provide the possibility of direct financial gain. This hasn't been entirely bad. My desire for engagement has lead me to write many excellent answers on Quora as I try to give others, who perhaps suffer as I have suffered, with guidance on the path that I have found. For today I have money, and more than most. I stumbled onto a rich road hidden between trees.

I was once able to find satisfaction in producing something and giving it to the world. But now, with fear such a dominating part of my psyche, those flickers of creation are so quickly snuffed out. I miss them. I remember them. I hate how the amazing focus and ability that these difficult years has given me cannot be easily applied to my past passions. I yearn for a time when I could spend hours at an art desk.

It is perhaps best that I couldn't find it. Because now I find myself feeling tingles of creative energy that have no end but my own satisfaction. But with the habits years behind me, I have nearly forgotten how to do it. I can go through the motions but no satisfaction is found. I feel that I must rebuild the emotional and psychological engines anew.

There is no purpose to this post. I only wanted to say that. I only wanted to say that life hammered away at me, and destroyed everything but the ember, from which a new fire must be nurtured. I'm angry that a new fire must be created. I'm angry that the world is so uncaring. I'm happy that I found purpose in helping others find the path I walked, but am angry that this purpose has nothing to do with me.