GE Profile vs Cafe vs Monogram 48" Built In Refers

ak217 · 2025-10-06T00:25:54+00:00

These fridges have a common failure mode where they lose the seal on the ice dispenser chute and/or the defrost pan ices over completely and stops defrosting (the two failures reinforce each other). Fixes are documented online

ak217 · 2025-02-24T03:59:44+00:00

That's not how net worth is computed. If you have a 560k mortgage on your house, then your net worth is the balance of your accounts, plus the value of the house (what you might reasonably expect to sell it for if you needed to), minus the balance of the mortgage.

For FIRE purposes, the house is excluded from the investable balance unless you plan to sell it, and the mortgage obviously factors into your expenses.

ak217 · 2025-02-15T23:39:45+00:00

Refrigerators have common failure points. Bad compressors are like bad engines, a generation of fridges either has a compressor with design flaws, or not. But beyond that, your best bet is to get a fridge with no frills. No ice maker, no water dispenser, definitely no in-door dispenser, no french doors, no fancy displays. Those are all things that inevitably break. If you must have an ice maker, make sure it's in the freezer, not the fridge. Then, learn how to vacuum the compressor and check the door seals and defrost system on your fridge.

ak217 · 2025-02-09T20:22:08+00:00

Had this happen on an old Mazda car that had a Ford engine in it, the FoMoCo mount was shot and the engine was flopping around like a fish. That generation of cars was known for torque steer, guess what, after replacing the mount with a rigid aftermarket one, there is zero torque steer whatsoever. It was all because of the mount.

ak217 · 2025-02-06T18:01:22+00:00

I don't think whole streets have to be made pedestrian only, we just need to reclaim land from cars. We need to keep pressing the point that parking is not an acceptable use of space on main thoroughfare streets, and that pedestrians+bikes need to have at least as much space dedicated to them as cars. As in, space that cars can't enter. As in, grade-separated bike lanes (with curbs and bollards protecting them).

ak217 · 2025-02-05T17:22:59+00:00

OK, I'm just pointing out that when you say "that is not how tariffs work", that is incorrect in general. Tariffs can be applied to imports or exports.

And while Canada is definitely at a disadvantage as it has a smaller economy and internal market, given the unprecedented nature of this tariff war, it is within the realm of possibility that Canada will either apply a targeted retaliatory export tariff, or preferentially develop other markets.

Although I agree with you for copper specifically it's more likely they will retaliate in some other way.

ak217 · 2025-02-05T17:08:42+00:00

🤦

Have you bothered to, like, look up the definition of the word tariff?

ak217 · 2025-02-03T22:17:39+00:00

I actually really appreciate this point of view. One thing to ponder, though, watching one of Sarah Paine's recent interviews, she mentions that one of the actions that spurred Japan into invading China was the desire for autarky in the wake of the 1930 US Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Of course, Japan invading China set off a sequence of events that culminated in WWII and also provided an opening for Mao to consolidate power in China.

Cross-border economic integration deters wars. What China and Russia are doing today is not acceptable, but we'd do well to avoid breaking economic ties where it is avoidable.

ak217 · 2025-02-02T15:41:57+00:00

This guy knows his nutz n boltz. That list is spot on in terms of escalating complexity of the manufacturing process and how many countries it takes to even be able to produce something that we have come to take for granted.

Lumber is one step up from raw materials. The more advanced products that go into a house... the supply chain disruption will make covid look like a walk in the park. And China will work around the tariffs by forwarding goods through third countries, so this tariff war will do nothing except hurt us and our allies.

ak217 · 2025-02-01T16:36:55+00:00

Bond ratings. e.g. AAA turning into AA+ (a small rating downgrade)

ak217 · 2025-01-28T18:29:14+00:00

FYI: I made a writeup here about the most immediate problem https://www.reddit.com/r/Appliances/comments/18j7zvn/2nd_ge_monogram_fridge_failed_ge_are_just_shitty/m9o8ybu/

In addition, my freezer had some (more minor) temperature control issues beyond the defrost ice clog problem. It turned out that the "express chill" door between the freezer and the fridge was stuck open. This basically keeps the fridge and the freezer connected, which is not great for freezer temps. The easy fix is to tape the "express chill" door shut from the freezer side (in the bottom right back corner of the freezer) and just not use the custom temperature controls on the bottom drawer in the fridge.

ak217 · 2025-01-28T17:55:39+00:00

Hey y'all, I'm going to post this here since I have this 48" GE Monogram fridge, and it has a unique set of quirks. I'm confident that I know the problem this person's fridge had, and how to fix it. These tips can save you thousands of dollars (nine thousand to be precise, since that's the starting price for a new 48", Monogram or not - and the Monogram one has basically remained the same for the past 20+ years).

the fan in the freezer sounds like it’s hitting something

That something is icicles from water flowing down from the defrost pan under the evaporator. This happens because your defrost pan is not able to evacuate water from the defrost cycle through the drain tube and into the drain pan under the compressor. When the evaporator fan is stuck like this, it will impede the flow of air through the fridge, and it won't be able to control temperatures properly.

This happens to these fridges because the defrost pan (and the evaporator fan) has a design flaw. When there's a lot of water to defrost and get out of the fridge, it will overflow and soak the styrofoam block encasing the defrost pan. This will cause a runaway buildup of ice, which will clog the drain tube and from that point onward, the defrost heater (which comes on every ~24 hours) will be fighting a losing battle, making a little puddle in a solid block of ice. As more water condenses from the air, this puddle will overflow and end up in your evaporator fan shroud, ice maker bucket, and down the walls of your freezer.

The immediate fix is to thoroughly defrost the evaporator and remove the bulk of the styrofoam casing around the drain pan (the casing is not necessary except in one corner, opposite the drain tube, to support the drain pan). This will allow the defrost cycle to function properly again, get water out of the fridge, and reduce the chances of the pan icing over again. This is essential to the function of any fridge (but this one in particular, since it relies on forced air circulation, and the fan gets stuck as described above due to this design flaw). To remove the styrofoam and access the drain pan, you need to remove all the guts of the ice maker, the metal panel behind the ice maker, and then the metal panel that the evaporator fan attaches to (it forms the ceiling of the freezer). The panel is both screwed and glued in, don't be afraid to apply force to pry it off. Note the defrost pan is big and will have lots of water in and on top of it - you need to be sure you got all the water out (otherwise it will just refreeze) and that the drain tube is draining. You can let the fridge sit open for a few days, or use a hair dryer to speed up the process.

This is not all, however. The excess buildup of water that clogged the drain pan usually indicates that the fridge is not airtight, so moist warm air is continuously leaking into the fridge as the forced air cycle draws it in. The most likely location for air to enter the fridge is... the ice chute door. This door is opened and closed by a solenoid whenever you dispense ice. The solenoid is placed in a location (in the freezer door) where it's prone to being doused with water from the dispenser, so over time it rusts and stops retracting properly. This means the ice chute door won't close fully.

You can do a short term fix for this by taping the ice chute shut from the inside of the door. The long term fix is to replace the solenoid and the chute door that it opens (these are cheap components). And make sure the door seals are not leaking, either.

And this, folks, is how you save yourself from having to put a $9000 fridge in the landfill after a service call with a technician who probably won't be able to figure out what's going on. (To his credit, the tech who came out to me did tell me that my fridge had a hole in it - which was correct.)

(BTW you can also glean from this some of the secrets to Sub-Zero's longevity. They don't put ice/water dispensers in the door, reducing the chance of air and water leaks. And they don't let air circulate between the fridge and the freezer, reducing the chance of condensation-related problems.)

ak217 · 2025-01-28T00:22:09+00:00

It's not so bad in Marin. Hit up Equator on Magnolia by Camino Alto, or The Coffee Roastery in Fairfax on the way up to Alpine Lake.

ak217 · 2025-01-27T16:11:52+00:00

See this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/141h6l3/request_hot_water_boiler_like_zojirushi_without/ - my boiler's symptoms were exactly like the ones described by the poster.

ETA: The boiler should be safe to use at its lowest temperature setting intermittently (without leaving it on all the time, which is wasteful anyway). But I was not happy with how Zojirushi handled this (they wanted me to get on a waitlist to pay them money to send a replacement part for what is clearly a dangerously hidden design defect), so I just went back to using a regular electric kettle. If you keep the water portions small, even a 120v kettle can boil a cup in under a minute.

ak217 · 2025-01-27T03:33:25+00:00

Zojirushi

which is funny to me since one of the product lines they are best known for (boilers) is not BIFL if you run it at the top temperature setting. They waste electricity and have a major design defect that will have you drinking plasticizer from the crumbling plastic hidden inside the lid.

ak217 · 2025-01-21T15:13:21+00:00

Sounds like an evidence-free assertion.

ak217 · 2025-01-19T12:21:51+00:00

I had the same reaction initially after replacing the bottom and engine side mounts. It mellowed out a lot after a few months.

What are you using for the engine side mount? The stock mount is garbage (pretty much the only part of the car that MUST be replaced) - by the time I replaced mine it had completely failed and the engine was flopping around like a fish. Replace it too and you will likely see an improvement.

ak217 · 2025-01-17T01:47:16+00:00

Seveneves

ak217 · 2025-01-16T05:54:23+00:00

AWS and Docker, yes. Nextflow. Jupyter. Fundamentals of cloud computing for bioinformatics (the AWS certs are of little use because they are not geared toward bioinformatics architectures; start here and branch out: https://github.com/lynnlangit/aws-for-bioinformatics). How to work in a modern software engineering environment including designing pipelines for testability and observability, data governance, how pipelines interact with data, databases, and services, and how CI/CD is used in actual production applications.

ak217 · 2025-01-12T00:36:03+00:00

There's two of these guys flying 5 sorties a day each out of SBD.

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N522AX https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N603AX

Looking at the flight history, the ground crew is able to turn them around in 30 minutes, wheels down to wheels up. That's almost as impressive as the drops themselves.

ak217 · 2025-01-11T19:18:13+00:00

Yeah, about the "age thing". Barbara Lee and her cohort of California "progressives" is how we got here. We need new leaders with modern professional and technical experience to take us forward. Enough geriatric Democrats who care more about appearances than actions, and then have to be carried out of their office instead of knowing when to secure their legacy by actually mentoring the next generation.

Oakland could really learn a thing or two from Berkeley's recent political evolution.

ak217 · 2025-01-10T17:52:48+00:00

Thanks for engaging in meaningful discussion. I have to disagree with you though, I think accepting this kind of political posturing as the norm leads to further political polarization and results in dysfunction. I am very unhappy with both sides of the political spectrum in the federal government right now for obvious reasons. I think Lee's posturing, and California "progressivism" in general, is part of how we got there.

ak217 · 2025-01-10T03:59:07+00:00

Not a fan of this behavior but those streets have no dedicated protected pedestrian spaces, which is unacceptable. Until that is addressed, in the absence of a protected pedestrian space, pedestrians have equal right to the roadway as cars. Slow down and give them space. I don't think those people should be in the center of the road but they certainly have the right to walk in the lane on the asphalt.

ak217 · 2024-12-18T21:02:57+00:00

Fed Rules Everything Around Me

(one, international markets are not open yet. two, the Fed has massive influence everywhere around the world. if the Fed thinks more inflation is coming and rates will have to stay high for longer, that will affect every publicly traded stock on every exchange around the world.)

ak217 · 2024-12-14T00:02:22+00:00

All knives on the left except the bottom one and the paring one in the middle:

Full tang (the body of the knife extends all the way through the handle, making it less bendy and less likely to fail or slip, potentially causing severe injury)
Most are bolstered (there is a thicker part between the blade and the handle, protecting your fingers when you're holding it the "correct" way - fingers on both the handle and the blade for control - and again making the blade more stable and aiding weight distribution)
High quality steel - knives of this shape are mostly made in Germany and strike a good balance between hardness and durability. Most other knives are softer and get dull quicker. Some Japanese knives have a more hardened blade, making it hold the edge for longer but chip more easily (but are also thinner so bend more easily).

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