Chillax

Dear someone from about 10 years ago,

Thanks for leaving that "Playmate by iGloo" red and white cooler along the shoulder of I-90 that summer. I couldn't resist stopping to see if my eyes were playing tricks on me. There it was, as though someone had gently set it there. Surely it didn't have anything inside? Actually, it was neatly packed full of good ol' Vitamin R on ice.

I still have the cooler, and now, during this heat wave, I have it full of Rainier Beer on ice right here next to me in my hot, hot house.

Foreign Objects Protector

Back in early 2006 I installed a Kenmore dishwasher (model number 665.16032402).

Over the last few weeks I noticed things were not getting very clean; very recently I noticed that no water was getting to the dishes on the top rack at all. The inside of the door was still dirty after running it. The air gap was streaming a lot of water down the edge of the sink every time it ran.

I found these instructions for dismantling the sump at the bottom of the chamber. I was particularly suspicious of parts with names like the "soil accumulator" and the "foreign objects protector." I removed a wide variety of large debris down there; things like a piece of plastic wrap, cherry pits, a stem from some grapes, a piece of broken glass, and some large beans. Wow. So, I guess I have been pretty damn desultory in my pre-washing. I also removed debris from the various drain holes and passages in the sump by filling them with water and then sucking them out with a wet-dry vacuum. That was key, I think. And I got to see up close the faux mini-garbage-disposal blade they say will grind up food particles if they get in your dishwasher, and I can say that most of the aforementioned debris I pulled out of there could probably have been ground up by the real garbage disposal in the sink, but the thing in the dishwasher is tiny and wimpy, so don't rely on it to do much for you.

It took about an hour and now works perfectly. I had to go to the store to buy a set of torx screwdrivers, but I am glad to have a few of those on hand.

ArcMap Attribute Transfer tool doesn't work?

This is exactly the problem with the Attribute Transfer tool I remember from days long gone by (a tool misleadingly and inappropriately located by default in the Spatial Adjustment toolbar; I added it to my Advanced Editing toolbar which is where it makes more sense, since transferring attributes has nothing to do with spatial adjustment that I can see):

• Both datasets involved are selectable (line and/or poly) and turned on in the TOC
• Nothing is selected
• Editing session is open on one dataset
• Click one feature with the Attribute Transfer tool (and the feature flashes), click the target feature, and nothing happens. The Attribute Transfer tool's thin line and end point are still floating there, acting as though they are still waiting for you to click a target feature to transfer attributes to.

The answer is you first need to use the entirely separate Attribute Transfer Mapping tool (also bizarrely located in the Spatial Adjustment toolbar; I relocated it to my Advanced Editing toolbar too) to set up which fields map to which from one data layer to the other.

The problem: when nothing happens, it should be a cue for a helpful (ha!) error message, or even better, a prompt from the separate Attribute Transfer Mapping tool (why are they even separate?) asking you which layers and fields you want to work with.